With the U.S. 2020 Census underway, it is relying on the public’s proactive participation more than ever, Census Bureau officials say.

The constitutionally-mandated 10-year survey will be completed mostly online for the first time ever, and most of the follow-up functions in the Census Bureau’s timeline will be delayed by health risks posed by coronavirus.

Most of Fort Dodge should have already received an envelope in the mail from the Census Bureau containing a unique online code for their household to complete the survey either online or over the phone. Those who do not complete it will receive a paper form in the coming weeks that they can fill out and mail back to participate.

With just a few minutes of your time, you can help your community in a vital way, local officials say. So far, only 44% of Webster County has participated.

“We want to ensure everyone’s counted,” Webster County Supervisor Mark Campbell said. “It’s imperative that every person take the time to fill it out.”

Campbell said that multiple sources of road funding, grant funding and federal funding can be made or broken by just one number: our official population count.

“There’s multiple times (local officials) have gone to Washington, D.C., and found that funding streams we went after have population requirements,” he said. “A lot of times Fort Dodge has fallen between that gap of 25,000 and 30,000 people, in no man’s land.”

Some grants have population requirements that Fort Dodge is just too large and just too small to qualify for. Missed opportunities have included grants for the local recreation facility, economic development and urban renewal opportunities.

But even things under the state’s jurisdiction rely on the official census count, too.

Local option sales tax and road use taxes, revenue streams for widely-used public services and local infrastructure maintenance, go to the state, which then distributes the funding to cities according to their population.

“There’s lots of those items that a good count is relevant to,” said Fort Dodge Mayor Matt Bemrich.

He expects Fort Dodge’s current count, 25,206, to tick up a bit thanks to the city’s efforts concentrating on job creation and new housing. In a particularly rural region of Iowa where many cities and counties are facing trends of depopulation, even a small increase is nothing to sneeze at.

“I’d be confused if it went down,” Bemrich said. “The important thing to remember is that this census data is important for the next 10 years.”

Mere minutes from everyone in Webster County will impact the place they live in for the next decade. Questions include the number of people in the home, the type of home, name, sex and how members of the household are related.

With years of preparation, quiet residents aren’t going to get off the hook so easily.

If you don’t participate online, over the phone, or through the next round of mail-in forms, a census worker will show up at your door sometime later this year to make sure you’re counted. In light of recent scams preying on senior citizens this year, it’s important to remember that anyone from the U.S. Census Bureau will have an identifying badge on.

“Over the last few years, we’ve updated boundary information they have, making sure they have the most current street, for example,” said Carissa Harvey, strategic planner for the city of Fort Dodge. “The main thing is addresses.”

Though the city started to coordinate mobile questionnaire booths at places like the library to assist residents in taking the census, the effort has been yet another delayed by the pandemic.

“We’re adapting or delaying some of our operations to protect the health and safety of our staff and the public and make sure we get the same population counted another way,” a recent statement from the U.S. Census Bureau said.

The self-response phase has been extended until Aug. 14 due to COVID-19. Nonresponse follow-ups and counts of those experiencing homelessness or transience will start in May, about a month later than planned.

If everything goes as planned, states, cities and counties will have their new population count by this time next year.

To learn more about how you can help, go to my2020Census.gov or call 844-330-2020.