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he US Census has been sending a message that people should fill out forms and be counted where they lived on April 1, 2010. As we’ve been hearing and seeing in the ads, the amount of federal and state money doled out to communities — such as Oriental and Pamlico County — hinges on how many people are counted as residents.

But some here are concerned that Oriental’s numbers could be kept low because so many people rely on their PO box for mail. While the Census says it sent out mailings to 120 million households, it did not send them to PO boxes.

Oriental residents who get their mail at PO Boxes, did not receive Census Forms. One resident, Marvin Bullock, at left, is concerned that that and other factors could lead to an under-count in Oriental.

A call to the Census operations center in Charlotte confirms that Census sent its forms only to street addresses. As Census spokesman Tony Jones put it, “No one lives at a PO Box.”

Jones says the Census figures it can count those residents with PO boxes when its workers go door-to-door from May through July to locate those who did not send in forms.

As Jones explained it, the Census will know where to look for people because last year, its workers identified what it took to be every residential unit in the country. Those are the addresses to which the forms were sent this spring. About 1% of the forms in southeastern states, Jones says, were addressed to residences without mailboxes and returned by the Postal Service to the Census as “undeliverable.” That’s how the Census workers will know which doors to go to in a month.

Of course, for the Oriental and Pamlico County residents who are concerned about being counted – and who don’t want to rely on the door-to-door visit — there is the option of going to Town Hall now and picking up a census form, filling it out and mailing it in. A box of forms at Town Hall is part of the Census Bureau’s “Be Counted” campaign.

A box of Census Forms, part of the Census Bureau’s “Be Counted” campaign. At Oriental Town Hall, you can get the forms in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian.

But at the Census’ Media Relations office in Charlotte, Tony Jones was not encouraging that. “For the most part, if you’ve not received your form, sit tight and wait” for the Census worker to pay a visit.

We asked if sitting tight and waiting didn’t contradict the Census Bureau’s own ad campaign for people to make sure they are counted. Wouldn’t some initiative by the residents be welcomed?

Jones says that folks “can if they want to,” but there’s a great likelihood they will still be visited by those Census workers in May, June or July. At issue he says, will be the absence of a barcode on those forms. (When the census sent its workers in to the field last year to ID every probable street address, Jones says, it assigned a GPS position to each, which corresponds to a barcode that appears on the Census forms mailed to 120 million households. That is the underpinning of the Census’ system.) Jones says the Census is concerned that residents might be frustrated at having to fill out the form twice.

There are some in town, however, who have a different concern — that some residents may not be counted at all.

“Frankly, I’m puzzled,” says Oriental’s Town Manager Randy Cahoon of Jones’ advice to sit and wait things out. “To be on the safe side,” Cahoon says he would still encourage residents to come in, get a form and fill it out. “I think it’s worth the trouble,” he says, noting the proportional share of federal and state funds that the town gets. The bigger its population, the bigger the town’s share.

Cahoon suggests that Oriental — which during the 2000 Census clocked in at 875 residents — may have as many as 100 more than that.

With that in mind, and the fact that many here didn’t receive Census forms in the mail, Cahoon says that he’s been asking visitors to Town Hall if they’ve received the Census Form in the mail or know anyone who has not received one. If not, he shows them the box of forms. In three weeks, people have taken away almost 100 forms.

Census worker, Larry Speck, at Oriental’s Town Hall. He’s there from 1-4p Monday-Friday for another week to answer questions. He can also direct residents to the “Be Counted” box of Census forms for those who did not receive them in the mail.

Resident and realtor Marvin Bullock is also anxious about Oriental’s population being under-counted. It’s not only because of the PO Box conundrum, he says but also because a number of residents split their time between here and other places and may be lost to the process. Also Bullock notes, some in Oriental live on boats, which the Census may not have thought to consider as living spaces.

On another score, Bullock sees being undercounted as an opportunity lost.

As the law stands right now, Bullock says, Oriental would have to have 1000 people before it can have a say in how the land is maintained in a one-mile radius from the town’s border. At the moment, Oriental doesn’t have extra-territorial jurisdiction or ETJ, as do other towns its size in NC. (Town Manager Randy Cahoon says Pamlico is the only county in NC that imposes that 1000 person threshold on its towns.)

That means, says Bullock, that a hog farm could set up shop just yards from the Oriental town line and the town would be powerless. If the town had over a thousand residents counted within its borders though, then it could have a say in what happened on the entrance in to town. That, says Bullock, would help with the quality of life.

“We are close enough to probably have over a thousand residents,” Bullock says. What those additional 150 people counted can buy for the town, he says, is “some input about what goes on just outside the town limits.”

Marvin Bullock who can see the Post Office from his house (in background) gets his mail via a PO Box and so didn’t receive a Census form. He’s worried that other PO box holders may not be counted.

As for the Census spokesman’s advice for residents to just sit and wait for a Census worker to count them, Bullock says it may be that “some wise statistician has developed correction formulas to iron out who lives where.” A former Information Systems professor himself, Bullock acknowledges that urging people to get the census forms in these final days and fill them out out may upset that algorithm.

But Oriental, he says, is so close to that magic number of 1,000 residents, that he thinks it’d be a shame if “a few dropped through the cracks” because of the Census’s current way of doing the count.

“I wouldn’t be on the soapbox,” Bullock says, “if it weren’t so close. Most people love this town so much that I hope they’d be good citizens and stand up and be counted.” It’s important Bullock says, for getting more federal and state money and for the purposes of the town having the same say that other towns in NC do about what happens just outside their borders.

The Census forms may be picked up during business hours at Town Hall. From 1-4p each afternoon Monday through Friday, a Census worker, Larry Speck is available to answer questions.

Posted Monday April 12, 2010 by Melinda Penkava