Austin Mayor Bonnie Rietz will be among 50 southeast Minnesota mayors inaugurating the opening of the Census 2000 office at Rochester Wednesday.

Tuesday, November 09, 1999

Austin Mayor Bonnie Rietz will be among 50 southeast Minnesota mayors inaugurating the opening of the Census 2000 office at Rochester Wednesday.

Then, Mayor Rietz will host a meeting Nov. 16 to discuss how the census will work and what benefits local governments can realize. That meeting will be held at the Austin Public Library next week.

One of the first priorities of the local census office will be to recruit and train local census staff, according to Matt Brasmer, operations manager for the Rochester office.

Census operations will require a significant number of people. By April 2000, each local office will have a work force of more than 1,000 temporary, full and part-time employees.

"It takes a large number of qualified individuals to take an accurate census," said Henry Palacios, Kansas City regional census director. "We’ve opened the Rochester office to start the process of identifying, testing and hiring people who know their local areas and whose work will make a difference to their communities for years to come."

One of the important differences an accurate census can make is this: More than $200 billion in federal funds are distributed annually to state and local governments based on the census population county.

But, there are other reasons, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic and Statistics Administration’s Bureau of the Census, according to Brasmer.

The other "biggest" reasons are:

– Census numbers can help a community work out public improvement strategies.

– When floods, tornadoes or earthquakes hit, the census tells rescuers how many people will need help.

– Because census numbers help industry reduce financial risk and locate potential markets, businesses are able to produce the products consumers want.

– Individual records are held confidential for 72 years, but individual citizens can request a certificate from past censuses that can be used as proof to establish age, residence or relationship, information that could help one qualify for a pension, establish citizenship or obtain an inheritance.

The Rochester Census 2000 office will serve Dakota, Goodhue, Wabasha, Winona, Houston, Fillmore, Mower, Dodge, Steele and Olmsted counties.

So good is the Census Bureau at collecting and protecting information, that it is able to offer a guarantee.

According to Brasmer, "The Census Bureau guarantees that answers given on Census forms are kept strictly confidential and never shared."

The Census Bureau, arguably the preeminent collector and provider of timely, relevant and quality data about the people and economy of the United States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in 1790.

The opening ceremonies begin 9 a.m. Wednesday at 2720 Highway 63 North, Rochester.

Congressman Gil Gutknecht will join the 50 mayors from Southeast Minnesota. Gutknecht and Rochester’s mayor Chuck Canfield are guest speakers.

Other dignitaries will be present as well as school children involved in the "Census in the School" project.