HARLINGEN — The city plans to fund a $25,000 drive to try to boost the U.S. Census Count, whose numbers are tied to federal dollars.
Last night, Assistant City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez presented city commissioners with the plan to fund a bilingual media campaign aimed at convincing all residents to be counted.
For every resident counted, the city stands to take in as much as $1,578 a year, Gonzalez said.
“This is an enormously important issue for our community — we’ve got to get right this time to have people respond to the Census,” Mayor Chris Boswell said. “It is an old-fashioned method of establishing population and it’s not accurate.”
Gonzalez said the U.S. Census Bureau’s count of 30,565 residential city addresses missed 1,440 addresses.
The city is requesting the Bureau add those 1,440 addresses to its total of city residences, Gonzalez said.
“In some cases, there were entire subdivision misses,” he said.
Gonzalez said the Bureau did not include homes in the Sunset, Vista Verde and New Hampshire-John Rose subdivisions.
The city is also requesting the Bureau add homes in those subdivisions to its list of city addresses.
Gonzalez said the city is earmarking $25,000 to fund a “marketing blitz” in mid 2019 and developing two websites while planning to offer mobile computer labs to help residents complete Census forms.
The city plans to form a committee to oversee the drive to boost the Census count.
Earlier this week, city spokeswoman Irma Garza stated the drive will include a bilingual media campaign, the distribution of fliers in English and Spanish as well as events to reach out to residents.
Like all cities along the U.S-Mexico border, the city faces the challenge of convincing undocumented immigrants to fill out Census forms amid a federal crackdown on illegal immigration.
Garza stated the city plans “a heavy focus on those areas where people did not participate for fear or other reasons.”
In past years, local leaders have argued the Bureau failed to accurately count residents.
In a previous Census, the Bureau counted a single resident for each home in an entire Census tract, Boswell said.
In 2011, the city’s signs placed its population at 74,950.
However, the 2010 Census placed its number at 64,849.
In 2001, the city called for a review of Census figures, arguing it had undercounted 2,500 residents in newly-annexed areas.
A year earlier, Cameron County officials warned the undercount could cost the county more than $100 million from 2000 to 2010.
