February 25, 1999
City, county get ready to make census count
By David Crawford
Staff Writer
County and city officials have been busy recently verifying and adding addresses for the 2000 Census.
Local governments are facing a Sunday deadline to complete the verification and addition process of addresses for the census.
If governments fail to meet the deadline, the city and county would not be able to appeal any further action on the addresses from the Census Bureau.
Pat Buttruff, with the Tiffin City Engineer's Office, said that she has been devoting two hours each morning this week to verifying a list of addresses sent by the Census Bureau.
Buttruff said that she has to verify 8,000 residential addresses within the city of Tiffin.
Paul Harrison, director of the Seneca Regional Planning Commission, said that he spent a large amount of time on county addresses before sending them to the Census bureau last Thursday.
He said that he had to verify 2,800 county residential addresses for the Census bureau.
In September, the Census Bureau sent the addresses to local governments on a compact disc. These address lists were supposed to be generated from the most updated lists used by the U.S. Postal Service.
Buttruff and Harrison found that information on the CD was much older. They needed to use more updated lists from utility companies and the Seneca County EMS to make the census list as current as possible.
Buttruff said that her biggest challenge was verifying whether certain addresses still had residences and adding the new addresses from growth in the city.
She has used the city's permits for new residences, along with lists provided by the utility companies, to add these new homes to the list.
Harrison said that his biggest challenge for the census addresses was to locate them on the large census maps of the county in order to add them to the list properly.
Ensuring the accuracy of these addresses is important for city and county governments. These addresses will be used to send the questionnaires and personal visits that will provide the information for the 2000 census.
Many decisions important for the area from the size of Congressional district to eligibility for federal and state funds are determined from data provided by the 2000 Census.