(Spirit Lake)– The laborious task of counting the population and figuring out where everyone lives is underway. Tammy Hamlin of Spirit Lake is an employee that’s helping conduct the census locally. She says it’s coming at a real challenging time in that they are currently not able to go door-to-door due to COVID-19. But Hamlin says there’s another way you can complete the census information they need. She says you can do that online…
“The dicennial census which is going on now is so vitally important because every person that lives here brings funding to our community. And the best way to do it is to go online. It’s 10 questions. It’s really simple. The other thing I’d like to mention about that is all of the vacation homes in the area also need to be accounted for so people can go online and list their vacation home as a vacation home. It will get off the roll sooner and save more taxpayer dollars because we won’t have to send more people out there. The other thing I’d like to mention is the Census Bureau has two sides: we have the dicennial side and an ongoing survey side which is where I work. And we do a variety of surveys. We do health surveys, crime surveys, surveys about housing, surveys about income and program participation. And some of those questions are personal, however we never ask for any account information or Social Security. But just do know that we have a variety of surveys that are always being conducted.”
And while there have been concern over scams that could be related to the census, Hamlin says there are some things you can do to determine what’s real and what isn’t…
“Any valid Census Bureau employee would have a personal identification. Of course at this time due to the COVID virus we are not allowed to make personal visits at all. So anyone making a personal visit would not be with the Census Bureau at this time. Also you can go to the US Commerce-dot-gov website and there’s an employee search. You can plug in the name of any individual who claims to be a Census Bureau employee and we will come up as a valid employee with our picture and you’ll be able to see our phone numbers and all of that.”
Hamlin adds it is critically important citizens complete the census because that’s what determines the amount of funding communities receive for a number of vital services.
You can go to 2020census.gov to complete the information online. You’ll be asked to provide a 12 digit I-D number that was either mailed to you or left at your door.
