Countdown to census starts

SANDPOINT — It was an unfriendly goose that sent Gwen Albers sprinting down a rural dirt road in high heels a decade ago in an effort to escape its squawking and flapping wings.

Albers, the managing editor at the Bonners Ferry Herald, was a census worker in Pennsylvania when the goose chased her a quarter mile to a neighbor’s house.

“It was flapping and pecking at me,” she said. “I busted into someone’s house.”

In another incident a St. Bernard jumped onto her car and scratched the new paint.

Locally, census workers have found themselves in more caustic situations. The Census Bureau’s information gathering process began last spring. In Bonner County last year the hollow eye of a gun barrel that greeted some workers.

“We had several incidents where my people were held at gunpoint,” Jon Burnett, a census field operations supervisor in Coeur d’Alene, said.

He wants to get the word out that the 1,000 employees in North Idaho who will gather information for the federal government are there for a good reason.

“They aren’t snooping,” Burnett said. “The only weapon they have is their devastating charm.”

Local census workers going door-to-door beginning Feb. 28 are on a mission to document every household in North Idaho in an effort that comes down to dollars and cents.

Each person counted by census workers, including minor children, brings $1,400 annually in federal spending to the community, David Mulvihill, of Boise, one of two census office managers in Idaho, said.

“Federal money spent in the community is based on a total population determination,” Mulvihill said. “Money doled out to the state is based on proportion.”

The U.S. Census Bureau is in the final quarter of gearing up to meet its April 1, Census Day deadline.

“We’re pushing toward the big day,” Burnett said. “That is the official day of the census, the snapshot of America.”

The bureau is in the process of hiring people to meet its criteria. Census Day comes just once every 10 years and applicants must take a test and interview for the four-week position. If they are chosen, prospective employees undergo training before being known, officially, as U.S. Census Bureau enumerators.

“That’s a fancy word for people who count people,” Burnett said.

Enumerators are the foot soldiers of the bureau. They are the people greeters, goose duckers and, in North Idaho, the muddy fender crew of the federal government.

Armed with questionnaires, enumerators travel city streets and  backroads, they go to soup kitchens, jails and hospitals and knock on a lot of doors in their duty to count every person in an assigned area.

The questionnaire comes with a stamped, addressed envelope and is supposed to be returned to the bureau as soon as its completed. Answers are kept confidential for 72 years, according to the bureau. They aren’t shared with anyone, including law enforcement or government agencies.

People who don’t reply, will be paid another visit.

“As long as they fill them out and send them back, they won’t see us again,” Mulvihill said. “If they don’t send them in, someone will pound on their door again.

“For every person we fail to count, the state loses money.”

Enumerators are hired locally for a good reason, he said.

“A lot of people don’t trust the federal government,” he said. “Our goal is to get local people out there who are recognized and little bit more accepted.”

The Census Day figure is the culmination of a lot of footwork.

“It’s as accurate as it can possibly be,” Burnett said. “We make a whole lot of effort to reach people by that date.”

That is why the bureau is in full recruitment mode.

“We definately need people up there,” Mulvihill said.

Albers, who plans to work for the bureau again this spring, remembers her time as an enumerator with fondness.

“It’s definately an adventure,” she said.