Archive: Around Town

Lansing's Tompkins County Legislator Pat Pryor threw down the gauntlet to other Tompkins County communities Tuesday to fill out and return the 2010 census mailers.  Mailers are the most cost-effective way of collecting census data, saving taxpayers the cost of sending census workers from home to home, trying to chase down residents.  Pryor says that in the 2000 census Lansing had the highest return rate at over 80%.

"According to the map on the wall in the Legislature chamber, from what I could see Lansing is the only municipality in Tompkins County that had an over 80% return rate throughout the whole town the last time the census was done," Pryor says.  "I have challenged my Legislature colleagues to join Lansing in having an over 80% return rate, and I assured them that we would also do that this time."

Tompkins County has launched an initiative to get everyone to respond to the census.  On March 10 they kicked off their 'Everyone Counts in Tompkins County!' campaign with a noontime event at Tompkins County Public Library.  The event featured speakers from the County, the City of Ithaca, and the State.  Accurate census figures are key in allocating $400 billion of federal and state aid to communities. 

So far the County has distributed 1,500 Census flyers to students on the Cornell campus, with more being sent to Ithaca College and TC3.  Informational e-mails went to 180 businesses, agencies, organizations, associations, town and village clerks, city and county departments, community centers, schools and school districts, museums, libraries, university departments and programs.  Census flyers were also distributed to 41 restaurants, laundramats, and grocery stores.


The census is taken once every ten years, and the U.S. Census Bureau adjusts the statistics gathered to estimate changes in the intervening years.  The current 2008 population estimate for Tompkins County is 101,136, based on a count of 96,502 in the 2000 census.  The city of Ithaca is estimated to have had 29,829 residents in 2008, and the Town of Lansing is estimated at 11,011, up from 10,521 in the 2000 census.

This year's census form is easy to fill out with only ten questions to answer.  For most people the form is estimated to take ten minutes or less to fill out.  Pryor says that the forms started appearing in Lansing mailboxes earlier this week.

"I threw down the challenge to the rest of the Legislature," Pryor says.  "I hope everyone in Lansing will get their census forms back, because we really want to defend our reputation."

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