DOBSON — Starting Saturday, Surry County residents who did not mail in census forms can expect to hear a knock on their door.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that most local residents did send back the forms to the tune of a 79-percent participation rate, according to final figures released Thursday by U.S. Census Bureau officials in Charlotte.

This is 11 percent higher than the county’s performance for the previous census in 2000, when 68 percent of Surry residents returned questionnaires by the deadline.

All 100 counties in North Carolina at least matched their 2000 rates, with 99 counties surpassing their levels of 10 years ago. Mecklenburg (72 percent) was unchanged from 2000 and in every county, at least 63 percent of the residents completed and mailed forms.

Surry’s 79-percent mail-participation mark was one of the highest in the state (Alexander and Chowan counties registered 80-percent rates) and exceeded that of the state by five percentage points. That’s despite no organized committee or other visible effort in the county to help boost participation.

“We attribute it to a number of factors,” Tony Jones, a North Carolina census spokesman, said Thursday, which included a media blitz encouraging people to participate in the head count to ensure school and other funding for their communities.

“The advertising campaign has increased awareness since the beginning of the year,” Jones said.

And while there was no actual group promoting census compliance in Surry, “we’ve had partnership specialists across the state who fanned out,” he added. “There are partnership specialists assigned to every county in North Carolina.”

Their function was to develop relationships with businesses and community organizations to raise census awareness. The number of partnership specialists was increased for the 2010 Census, partly using Recovery Act funding.



Door-To-Door Visits

The “second half” of the 2010 census effort begins Saturday with non-response follow-ups designed to count those households that — for one reason or another — failed to return the questionnaires mailed to them.

“That will run through July,” said Jones, who added that the enumerators who visit homes will display credentials assuring homeowners of their involvement with the census.

“Legitimate census workers will have ID badges which will say U.S. Census Bureau on it,” the state spokesman said. They also will be equipped with black canvas bags bearing the census logo and binders.

“They will not be asking for personal information like Social Security numbers or bank account numbers,” Jones said.

If a respondent is asked to provide such details by someone claiming to be a census taker, they should report this activity to the local census office nearest to their home or a law enforcement agency.

Residents will be requested to supply only information sought on the forms, which seek to identify all occupants of a home.

Title 13 of the U.S. Code guarantees respondents that all their personal information will be kept confidential.

Contact Tom Joyce at tjoyce@mtairynews.com or at 719-1924.