Agenda - Council - 07/08/1980 - Laserfiche WebLink

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~h'd[._risky't~ modi'~Cy :fhe 'g~6C'esSl,k~. ,:! .... ,j. a'ny re~son:t 'J' '?;'gf t~e.Bureau were req'b}m'e'd'to ~k",~,.d.the local .review period b_yond:>the 6 :weeks al l,.otted, extensive ~evision~ v~ould have to be made %o allow for ~he delayed receipt of ~'~h~u's forms from the census.offices and the reduced amount of time available to process the data' In light of the time currently allowed for the full local review process, as I have described above, I am doubtful that there would be any appreciable gain in the qualJty of census data for a particular municipality as a result of extending local review. Further, there would definitely be significant cost increases, but more importantly, the ability to process the census results within the legally mandated time frame would be in jeopardy. On balance~ ! have concluded that the risks and costs involved in keeping the offices open across the country to accommodate.further extension of the local review period far outweigh any potential improvements from extending the local review activity. I can assure your constituents that, depending on the nature and timing of the problems reported and the overall impact on the census count for a particular '- area, the office in a specific area-will remain open until the Census Bureau is convinced that the counts are satisfactory. The problems of ZIP codes being shared by different political jurisdictions or of post office names often being that of a larger neighboring j.urisdiction are not unusual but actually fairly common. The Census Bureau is aware of this and has developed procedures to ensure that people are counted where they actually reside regardless of their mailing address. In most parts of the Country, typically the suburban and rural areas, the address list that was used to l~be] the census-questionnaireswas developed by census enumerators-who canvassed the areas-in a-.systematic~manner~_ They inquired at each household-for an adequate mail~ng address~_ ~I? the_residents_ gave a post office name and ZIP Code of one jurisdiction because that-was used to deliver the mail but actually lived in a neighboring jurisdiction, they nevertheless will be counted in the correct jurisdiction because the physical location of the house is recorded on the map by the enumerator and also assigned the correct geographic code in our computer file which is used to tabulate the data. In other parts of the country, mostly the highly urbanized areas, the Census Bureau purchased address lists from commercial mailing firms. In order to assign the correct geography, i.e., county, city, etc., to these addresses, the Census Bureau perfoms a computer operati'on'called ?geocoding." This operation involves matching all of the addresses on the purchased address list to a geocoding file containing all of the streets and the associated address ranges for each block in these areas. Each Street and address range is associated with numeric codes representing the State-county-township-city where it is physically located. The file also contains the correct ZIP code