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Hearing Transcripts
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6 UNITED STATES CENSUS MONITORING BOARD
7 FIELD HEARING
8 SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
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12 REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT
13 TAKEN AT SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 2000
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20 DENISE L. McCONNELL, CSR, RPR
CSR NO. 11508, RPR NO. 4303
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1 ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF BOARD MEMBERS
2 PAGE
3 Fred T. Asbell,
Executive Director
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J. Kenneth Blackwell, 6,9,13
5 Co-Chairman, Congressional Members 28,29,30
6 Gilbert F. Casellas, 7,9,33,39,49,55,67,70
Co-Chairman, Presidential Members 73,77,80,81,82,91
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Lorraine A. Green, 13,37,38,82
8 Presidential Member
9 Mark Johnson,
Executive Director
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Dr. David W. Murray, 10,34,48,49
11 Congressional Member 79,80,84,88,90
12 Joe D. Whitley, Esq., 10,77,88
Congressional Member
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14 ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF PANELISTS
15 Augie Bareno, 40,48,80,81,89
Coordinator California QAC project
16 and the Chicano Federation
17 Grover Diemert, 67
Executive Director, Bayside Settlement House
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Tania Farley, 55,83
19 Census Liaison, Union of Pan-Asian Communities
20 Jeri Gulbransen, 70
Coordinator, Census 2000 Street Theater,
21 City of Chula Vista
22 Karen Lamphere, 13,18,29,30
Senior Regional Planner, SANDAG 31,32,36,78,82
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Art Madrid
24 Chairman, San Diego Association of Governments
25 Alma Manabat, 68
Bayside Settlement House
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1 Index continued
2 Peter Martinez, 73,87,88
Detective, Gang Suppression Unit,
3 Imperial Beach Sheriff's Station
4 Joey Perry, 21,33,37,39
Census Coordinator City of San Diego
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William Rowel, 49,83
6 California Black Health Network
7 Pam Slater, 4,13,32,33,34
San Diego County Board of Supervisors 38,78,79,81
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14 TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
of the Field Hearing of the United
15 States Census Monitoring Board,
commencing at 9:11 a.m. on Tuesday,
16 June 27, 2000, at 401 B Street,
Suite 700, San Diego, California,
17 before Denise L. McConnell,
CSR No. 11508, RPR, a Certified
18 Shorthand Reporter for the State
of California.
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1 TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 2000 - SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
2 9:11 A.M.
3
4 SUPERVISOR SLATER: Good morning everyone.
5 I'd like you to, please, take a seat so we can get
6 started. I'd like to welcome everyone here on behalf of
7 SANDAG, which is the San Diego Association of
8 Governments. I'm pleased to welcome representatives
9 from the U.S. Census Monitoring Board, members of the
10 San Diego Region Complete Count Committee, the Census
11 Bureau, and other invited guests to our forum today.
12 Our Complete Count Committee was
13 established by SANDAG in the fall of 1998, and many of
14 the people here today have been actively involved since
15 then. Our collaborative team of more than 100 members
16 included elected officials, City and County staff,
17 community leaders, educators, business people, members
18 of the media--key players, by the way--and volunteers
19 from throughout our diverse region.
20 This dedicated group has met regularly for
21 the past year and a half to develop and implement a
22 number of creative activities to increase the census
23 mail-back response rate. We thank them for coming today
24 to share this data with you. Since all the groups are
25 not able to be here, I would like to highlight some of
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1 the outreach projects supported by our region's Complete
2 Count Committee.
3 Many of the activities focused on the
4 largely Hispanic, Latino population in our region.
5 Outreach efforts were conducted at the schools,
6 community events, and in partnership with prominent,
7 local Spanish-language publications.
8 The Alliance for African Assistance
9 conducted outreach activities to African refugees and
10 immigrants. Information and assistance was provided in
11 four languages spoken by African and Kosovar immigrants.
12 The Indian Human Resources Center developed and
13 distributed information targeting the region's urban
14 Indian Americans. Jewish Family Services conducted
15 outreach activities to the region's approximately 9,500
16 Russian immigrants. And the Vietnamese Federation of
17 San Diego used a variety of means to conduct outreach
18 efforts to the region's large Vietnamese population.
19 I would like to take this opportunity to
20 thank the members of the San Diego region's Census
21 Complete Count Committee for their hard work and
22 dedication. And thank you, also, to the members of the
23 Monitoring Board for coming here to San Diego to hear
24 about our region's successful census outreach program.
25 Would you like to make some comments?
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1 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: Thank you very
2 much, Supervisor Slater.
3 Ladies and gentlemen, public officials, it
4 is a delight for us, the Members of the U.S. Census
5 Monitoring Board, to be with you this -- this morning.
6 I am Ken Blackwell, one of the two Co-Chairmen of the
7 Census Monitoring Board. We will have our members
8 introduce themselves.
9 But let me just say, by way of some opening
10 remarks, that the -- the Board is a watchdog oversight
11 unit of this process. And many times watchdog units
12 look for irregularities and -- and wrongdoing and
13 vulnerabilities within the system. Not frequently
14 enough do these watchdog organizations or units, you
15 know, look for those things that are going right, those
16 things that are community legacies that can be built
17 upon, you know, examples of collaboration and
18 coordination of that expanded capacity of local
19 communities to -- to build better futures for
20 themselves.
21 And so this is an opportunity not for us to
22 turn a blind eye, you know, to the problems or
23 challenges. We want to hear those, too. But it's also
24 an opportunity for us to hear from you as to what worked
25 and what this community can continue to build on so that
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1 the 2010 census is even a better census than the 2000
2 census.
3 With me this morning as -- as my fellow
4 Co-Chair is Gil Casellas. He will have some opening
5 remarks, and then we will introduce ourselves to -- to
6 this audience. Gil?
7 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Good morning,
8 everyone. It's good to be here. I'm Gil Casellas. As
9 Ken just told you, I'm Co-Chairman of the U.S. Census
10 Monitoring Board. And as Ken noted, the Board was
11 created in 1997 by Congress to oversee the
12 implementation and the operations of Census 2000. And
13 as most of you are, all of us, as well, are volunteers.
14 We were asked to perform this civic duty,
15 and as part of it, we travel around the country and
16 listen to community groups. We read lots of
17 information. We talk to lots of people. This is our
18 second day of our visit to California. One of our Board
19 members is not here today. He's off doing the business
20 of the people of California, and that's your Lieutenant
21 Governor, Cruz Bustamante who was with us yesterday in
22 Los Angeles, and, unfortunately, he could not be here
23 with us this morning.
24 I'd like to thank Art Madrid. I'd like to
25 thank Supervisor Slater and all the staff at SANDAG for
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1 helping us in holding this hearing today. It's
2 appropriate for SANDAG to host this meeting. You're
3 leadership on the census in the San Diego area has
4 helped to produce extraordinary results. And believe
5 me, when we report to Congress, as we do regularly, we
6 want to include the activities and the successes and any
7 concerns, as well, that -- that you have.
8 Going into Census 2000, it was expected
9 that census forms would be mailed back at a lower rate
10 than they were in 1990. Here in the San Diego area, you
11 actually improved over the 1990 response rate. In the
12 City of San Diego, response rates rose from 67 percent
13 in 1990 to 71 percent in 2000. For San Diego County
14 this response rate climbed from 68 percent in 1990 to 71
15 percent this year.
16 That's an extraordinary achievement, and it
17 came about through a cooperative and collaborative
18 effort that we hope to hear more about this morning.
19 Overall, San Diego managed a budget of $400,000 in State
20 funding distributing those dollars to 24 City, County,
21 and community-based organizations. The result was a
22 tremendously effective job of census education and
23 outreach.
24 The importance of community involvement in
25 the census cannot be underestimated or overstated. No
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1 matter how long the Census Bureau has to plan a census,
2 the census, like politics, is necessarily local. It
3 necessarily has to be a local effort. And the Census
4 Bureau in Washington or even in Los Angeles cannot hope
5 to know this community as well as the people in this
6 room.
7 As all of us who have been involved with
8 grass-roots organizing, education, and service know, the
9 greatest asset you can have are the contacts and the
10 trust that has been built through years of community
11 involvement. And your willingness to share that
12 expertise has been critical to the job that's been done
13 here for Census 2000.
14 So I thank you on behalf of the Census
15 Monitoring Board. Let me note that, although our time
16 here is limited, we invite written comments, and we will
17 keep the record open until the end of July to accept,
18 not only from members of the panel here but members of
19 the public, any information you want to share with the
20 Board so that that information can be incorporated in
21 our -- our report to Congress in the fall.
22 And with that, I think we're going to go
23 down --
24 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: Joe?
25 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: -- and let each
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1 member introduce themselves.
2 MR. WHITLEY: My name is Joe Whitley. I'm
3 a member of the Congressional side of the Monitoring
4 Board. And it's a great pleasure to be here.
5 As you can tell by my accent, I'm from the
6 south. I'm from Atlanta. And we look forward to
7 listening to you about what you've done in San Diego.
8 We'd like to -- I'd like to carry some of this weather
9 back. And if this is hot and this is too humid, believe
10 me, we'll take it any day of the week.
11 And, also, we'd like to take back some
12 ideas about how you've done things so well here in
13 San Diego. I've heard great things about it, and we
14 look forward to hearing your comments today. Thank you
15 very much.
16 DR. MURRAY: Good morning. I'm David
17 Murray. I live in Washington, though I'm Californian by
18 birth, and I do miss it very much. Particularly on days
19 like this. It's nice to be back here. Congratulations
20 to you. In general, I'm interested in issues of science
21 and public policy and got involved in this Congressional
22 side of the Census Monitoring Board. Very much aware of
23 the -- the increasing challenge the census faces.
24 You know, there was a reason for us to
25 anticipate that we were in trouble. The declining rates
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1 of participation all across American life were a strong
2 signal, a strong warning. There were declines in voter
3 participation. There were declines in census response.
4 There were declines in civic engagement. At least,
5 that's what the data showed us. So we had concerns that
6 the census, itself, was going to suffer, likewise.
7 So it's rather remarkable to see that local
8 communities can respond to these challenges in an
9 effective way and not only arrest the slide that we were
10 seeing decade after decade, but actually begin to
11 reverse it, actually begin to revitalize, through the
12 census, the community engagement.
13 Why is there a slide? A lot of reasons.
14 Americans are much more mobile. There are so many more
15 of us. So many new communities have come in with
16 linguistic challenges, with cultural traditions. So
17 much of a lack of trust and confidence in government.
18 How much do we really want to yield information about
19 ourselves, particularly if we come from backgrounds
20 where government surveillance is not necessarily the
21 most positive thing.
22 So the biggest difficulty in my perception
23 was to convince people that it mattered, that it had
24 a -- a value to be enrolled, to be incorporated into the
25 political process; that there were benefits that flowed.
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1 And they weren't just the benefits of the dollars and
2 the political power. But that there was a byproduct to
3 getting involved. That the byproduct was available at
4 the local neighborhood community.
5 That Washington has great theories and
6 Washington has great policies from the top down, but
7 they don't really work until they get activated at the
8 local level: learning from neighborhoods; learning from
9 communities; learning from neighborhood leaders who were
10 able to reach out and mobilize their community, that
11 they had the trust; they had the linguistic skills; and
12 they had the commitment to get the local level alive and
13 responsive. We've seen that.
14 Not everything went perfectly smoothly. We
15 have many lessons to learn. We want to hear from you
16 how you did it, what we can carry forward into the next
17 census, and in particular we are left with the hope that
18 some of those lessons and some of those communities that
19 were mobilized will remain after we've gone, after the
20 census is closed down and waits for the next ten years
21 to come alone; that we can leave some kind of legacy and
22 some kind of activity that continues to draw the
23 disenfranchised into political power and continues to
24 serve communities as they become more self-governing
25 through their involvement.
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1 Thank you.
2 MS. GREEN: Good morning. I'm Lorraine
3 Green. I'm a Presidential Member of the Board, and I,
4 too, am very pleased to be here this morning. I'm
5 interested in hearing about your successful outreach
6 operations and how we can go forward and use some of
7 your successes for the future. Thank you.
8 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: Joining us at
9 the -- this part of the table are Mark Johnson and Fred
10 Asbell. They are Executive Directors of the U.S. Census
11 Monitoring Board.
12 Our first panel will be comprised of Karen
13 Lamphere, who is the Senior Regional Planner for SANDAG,
14 and -- and we will also have joining us Joey Perry of
15 San Diego City.
16 MS. LAMPHERE: I believe Supervisor Slater
17 had some additional comments to make.
18 SUPERVISOR SLATER: I had two roles
19 today --
20 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: Okay.
21 SUPERVISOR SLATER: -- because I gave the
22 opening comments, which you heard, and now I'm here to
23 tell you about the County of San Diego's effort.
24 And it's very important to the County of
25 San Diego and to any counties, especially as to all
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1 local jurisdictions, that we get a complete count,
2 because the counties are responsible for providing
3 health care, mental health care, human service, welfare
4 programs, and things like that. And to the extent that
5 we are under-counted, we are under-funded.
6 And many times--as was noted by
7 Dr. Murray--he notes that many populations that come
8 here, new immigrants are deeply suspicious of government
9 because they've come from countries where government was
10 not friendly to them. And I -- I want to just -- I was
11 just sitting here thinking of that comment and was
12 reminded that our country was founded by people who were
13 deeply suspicious of government, with good reason.
14 So we actually have a natural suspicion of
15 too much oversight by government. And because of that,
16 it's very important for us to reach out and to let
17 people know that this is a positive benefit for them to
18 be counted because it brings back more of the tax
19 revenue that we all pay. From our hard-earned dollars,
20 we pay the money in our tax system.
21 And to the extent we're properly counted,
22 we're able to retrieve more of those dollars for
23 necessary health and human services programs which we
24 need to implement to help people who cannot help
25 themselves or who -- who are in transition.
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1 The County Board of Supervisors has been
2 very committed to providing staff and incorporating
3 census outreach activities into our existing county
4 programs. We have coordinated with managers and staff
5 in Health and Human Services, with Cal-Works Program,
6 which is our Welfare-to-Work program in San Diego
7 County, our Aging and Independent Services and other
8 county departments, to take advantage of every
9 opportunity to reach historically under-counted
10 populations.
11 In addition to county support, we did
12 receive State funds from California's Complete Count
13 Committee through SANDAG to extend the census outreach
14 message. Our Aging and Independent Services Department
15 developed innovative activities to reach thousands of
16 elderly and shut-in recipients throughout the county who
17 might not have otherwise been counted.
18 Trained staff delivered census information
19 to the clients encouraging them to return the census
20 forms and impressing upon them how important the count
21 is. Staff also provided assistance as needed to
22 complete count census forms and designed and distributed
23 small magnifiers with the Census 2000 logo to their
24 clients.
25 As you know, especially those of you who
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1 got the long census form, those aren't always easy to
2 navigate. So even the short forms can provide
3 challenges. But getting the long form, many people
4 needed some assistance.
5 Many individual efforts promoted the census
6 in our region of 2.8 million people. However, I believe
7 what truly made the difference were the collaborative
8 efforts of Complete Count Committee members, local
9 agencies and organizations, and the Bureau of the
10 Census.
11 These organizations developed and
12 implemented a number of creative activities promoting
13 the census so that it would reach thousands of the most
14 difficult-to-reach residents, including programs such as
15 interior signage promoting the census in both English
16 and Spanish on all public transit buses in our region,
17 advertisements in movie theaters, many community events
18 and census celebrations where there would be, like, a
19 little party, and the idea would be that you would come
20 and either submit your form, or, if you did not have
21 your form, you could pick one up and have assistance in
22 filling it out. And we did this in many immigrant
23 communities and -- and other under-served areas.
24 Newspaper advertisements and outreached messages
25 produced in languages such as Spanish, Tagalog,
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1 Vietnamese, Japanese, and Russian.
2 And I'd like to note that in the San Diego
3 region, I believe there are 42 actual spoken languages
4 here in the school system. So we chose the majority
5 populations, but by no means do they represent all of
6 the spoken languages in our county.
7 Funding provided by the California Complete
8 Count Committee helped to implement a variety of
9 creative outreach programs and was critical to our
10 success. Since we had an established Regional Census
11 Complete Count Committee, when the funds became
12 available, we were able to develop and -- and coordinate
13 a Request for Proposal process and to make State funds
14 available to local programs here as quickly as possible.
15 I'd like to note that there are several
16 good ideas that we did not have funding quite soon
17 enough to implement. The City of San Diego and the
18 County of San Diego worked closely together on many
19 programs because we have the -- jointly the largest
20 population base that we serve.
21 And one good idea that came out, which was
22 not able to be implemented, would be to have videos
23 promoting the census in appropriate languages that could
24 be submitted to many different locations where people
25 have to wait in waiting rooms. And we know that that's
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1 endemic in our society. You're always waiting for
2 something in line for something. And so we felt if we
3 could get more of those kind of promotional videos out,
4 we could even increase our response rate.
5 I'd like to thank all of you for coming to
6 San Diego today to hear about our -- our program and
7 wish all of us the best of success next time around to
8 even increase our numbers.
9 Karen?
10 MS. LAMPHERE: Thank you. Good morning,
11 Co-Chairman Blackwell, Co-Chairman Casellas, and Members
12 of the Board. I'd also like to welcome representatives
13 from some of our legislators in San Diego: Jeff Gattas
14 from Assemblywoman Denise Ducheny office is here, Greg
15 Stein from Congressman Brian Bilbray's office, and Amy
16 Denhart from Senator Barbara Boxer. Thank you all for
17 coming.
18 SANDAG formed the San Diego Region Complete
19 Count Committee in September of 1998, and Committee
20 members included elected officials and representatives
21 from community-based organizations, public health and
22 safety agencies, the education and business communities,
23 religious organizations, the media, and ethnic groups
24 that have been historically under-counted.
25 The Complete Count Committee worked hard
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1 the year and a half prior to the census to develop plans
2 and strategy to reduce the under-count in this region
3 and make sure that we got our fair share of funds and
4 political representation. None of the agencies involved
5 in the Complete Count Committee had funds to carry out
6 any outreach activities. Pretty much anything that was
7 going to get accomplished was going to get accomplished
8 within existing budgets.
9 In December of 1999, Governor Gray Davis
10 formed the California Complete Count Committee and
11 allocated $25 million statewide for outreach purposes.
12 Approximately 400,000 of these funds were made available
13 to our Complete Count Committee. As Supervisor Slater
14 mentioned, we developed and implemented a plan to
15 distribute the funds to local agencies and
16 organizations. And 24 projects were funded, some of
17 which you'll hear about today.
18 Our Complete Count Committee was a very
19 successful collaboration of Federal, State, and local
20 agencies and organizations that resulted in a mail-back
21 response rate of 71 percent. That was a rate that was
22 among the highest in the state of California, and
23 exceeded the 68 percent achieved in 1990.
24 Many of the outreach activities of the
25 government agencies and some of the larger
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1 community-based organizations in the Complete Count
2 Committee might have been undertaken even in the absence
3 of outside funding. However, it's important to remember
4 that in -- for future censuses, that most outreach
5 activities by the small community-based organizations,
6 which have the closest ties to the population groups
7 that we're really trying to reach, would be impossible
8 without the infusion of outside funds.
9 It's also important to note that it doesn't
10 take a lot of outside funding to have a significant
11 impact. Even a few hundred or a few thousand dollars to
12 cover printing costs can go a long way in getting the
13 census message out to the people who need to hear it.
14 We also found that, once agencies had some
15 funding, they were able to secure additional matching
16 resources in in-kind partnerships to promote the census
17 message. And in our case, that $400,000 that we
18 obtained from the State was matched by over 200,000 by
19 the participating agencies and other groups that were
20 willing to provide funds once some seed-money was there.
21 We appreciate that you've come here today
22 to take testimony on what worked in San Diego. I know
23 the Complete Count Committee is proud of what was
24 accomplished in our region, and we look forward to
25 sharing some highlights with you today. Thank you.
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1 MS. PERRY: Hello. I'm Joey Perry with the
2 City of San Diego. I'm the Census Coordinator. And
3 Honorable Chairman, Co-Chairman and Members of the
4 Board, I'm happy to be able to talk to you today about
5 the experiences of the City of San Diego.
6 I have worked with the 1990 census and the
7 Year 2000 Census, so I have a little bit of experience
8 with it, and I've worked with all phases of census
9 preparation and census results from the LUCA Program,
10 and the Statistical Areas Program, Block Boundary
11 Suggestion Program, and the Boundary and Annexation
12 Program. I've worked on pre-census and post-census
13 local reviews for the 1990 census, so I'm very aware and
14 familiar with the census operations.
15 One with of the things that I think made
16 the Year 2000 Census better in the San Diego region than
17 the 1990 census is the fact that we really worked on
18 outreach operations. And I'm really thrilled that we
19 were able to do that working with our local census
20 offices to provide facilities for employment testing and
21 to provide facilities for community Questionnaire
22 Assistance Centers and Be Counted Centers. A number of
23 civic facilities were used for those purposes.
24 Ms. Slater and Ms. Lamphere have already
25 talked about some of the successes that we've had in the
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1 region and some of the specific projects that the
2 Regional Complete Count Committee worked on. I'd like
3 to focus my comments today on the City of San Diego's
4 outreach activities.
5 With the City of San Diego, we didn't want
6 to duplicate the efforts of the Regional Complete Count
7 Committee, but rather we wanted to augment them. And so
8 we were focusing on three main audiences: the general
9 public, staff -- City staff--we have about 10- to 11,000
10 City employees as well as clients of the City--and then
11 select, targeted populations.
12 We're very fortunate that we had support
13 from our elected officials and from the City Manager. A
14 number of our elected officials made -- had press
15 conferences, made comments. Every time we made
16 speeches, they talked about the importance of the census
17 and were really out there encouraging their constituency
18 to respond to the census.
19 The City Manager was instrumental in
20 starting the City's Complete Count Team. Basically, he
21 said that this is something that was very important and
22 we need to do it, and he recognized very early on the
23 importance of funding and making sure that we had the
24 complete count so that the City of San Diego would
25 receive its fair share of funding.
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1 Among the activities that we undertook were
2 development of a web site on the City's web page. We
3 had a page devoted to the census talking about why the
4 census was important to the City, general census
5 information, and FAQs. We also listed many City
6 facilities that were built or constructed in City
7 projects that were done using community development
8 Block-Grant funds, which certainly are tied into census
9 information. And we had links to other excellent
10 census-related web-based resources such as the SANDAG
11 web site and the Census Bureau's web site.
12 We were fortunate enough with the funding
13 that we got from the State to be able to provide
14 bookmarks for all of our City libraries. When people
15 checked out books, they could get a -- a bookmark that
16 emphasized the important role of the census in helping
17 libraries conduct their business.
18 We posted banners at all 34 branch
19 libraries and at more than 60 Park and Recreation
20 facilities and swimming pools and at about half of our
21 fire stations, particularly fire stations in the
22 under-counted communities, to promote the census and
23 help the residents realize the connection between the
24 census information and the services that the City
25 provides.
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1 At our local Park and Rec centers, we had a
2 poster contest or coloring events where we encouraged
3 youngsters to develop posters about the census and how
4 that helped fund Park and Recreation programs. Various
5 departments throughout the City developed newsletters or
6 as part of their existing newsletters for internal
7 purposes as well as external purposes talking about the
8 importance of the census.
9 Our Water Department sent out notices to
10 450,000 households in a regular water mailing that
11 talked about how the census is coming and how the Water
12 Department used census information to figure out where
13 to put water lines and how big to make the water lines.
14 So we tried to make everything relative to the specific
15 department in each of the newsletters that went out.
16 Additionally, we had lobby displays in City
17 facilities that are visited by the public. And at most
18 public counters, we tried to have some census
19 information, census incentive items like pencils or
20 something like that so that the public could take those
21 items.
22 Additionally, the City has a cable-access
23 station. We ran a number of public service
24 announcements and also some census educational videos
25 starting last fall to let people know just kind of what
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1 the census was all about, the history of the census, and
2 the importance of that. And we believe that that
3 education effort was helpful.
4 We also targeted several specific
5 populations. One was the Housing Commission clients.
6 We have about 11,000 families that receive Housing
7 Commission assistance, and a special mailing went out to
8 all of those clients urging them to complete the census
9 and cooperate.
10 We also had, in 1990, one particular census
11 track that had about a 10 percent under-count rate.
12 This is the census track around the University of
13 California at San Diego. And we're not exactly sure why
14 there was such a big under-count, particularly in
15 household population. But we did an effort. We
16 targeted mailing to that particular census track and
17 encouraged everybody to fill out the census.
18 We suspect that -- that perhaps some forms
19 weren't filled out because they were visiting professors
20 or students from other countries, and they might not
21 have known that they need to participate or be counted
22 in the census. So we wanted to make it clear to them
23 that they should.
24 Another thing that we did is the City
25 sponsors shelters for the homeless for inclement
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1 weather, and we, as a City, kept our shelters open for
2 an extra month to make sure that those shelters would be
3 open during census day and made sure that we got the
4 local census offices to those centers to count the
5 homeless people and also provided incentives.
6 We distributed washcloths to the homeless.
7 We thought the washcloths would be something the
8 homeless people could use. And, again, the funding for
9 the washcloths was available through the Regional
10 Complete Count Committee and the State Complete Count
11 Committee.
12 So all in all, we've heard that the
13 San Diego region has done a pretty good job on the
14 census. An excellent job, actually. We had a
15 68 percent response rate in 1990. We increased to a
16 71 percent response rate in the year 2000. And I think
17 that there are four major factors that lead to the
18 success that we had.
19 One was the increase in public awareness
20 and education that I -- that I think was largely a
21 result of the funding that the Census Bureau provided
22 through national advertising and the advertising that
23 was targeted to local communities coupled with the
24 advertising that the State paid for and the Regional
25 Complete Count Committee paid for. I think that
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1 educational aspect was very important in getting the
2 word out.
3 Another key to our success was that we were
4 able to plan for some events very far in advance and
5 stick to them. Anytime we have plans that are changing,
6 we have this changing target, it makes it very difficult
7 for us to fund for it. And the further in advance we
8 know what the plans are and we stick to those plans, it
9 makes it a little bit easier.
10 A couple of census programs did slide a
11 little bit, and for the City of San Diego, it was a
12 little bit challenging to try to deal with outreach at
13 the same time we were trying to do local review because
14 it's the same staff who does both. So if we could work
15 on the timing a little bit, not have those overlapping,
16 I think we -- we would have been able to devote even
17 more efforts to our census outreach efforts.
18 Funding, as was previously mentioned, I
19 think is -- is absolutely critical. It's important to
20 have funding for knowledgeable staff that are dedicated
21 to census activities, and it's important to have funding
22 for outreach activities and things as simple as, you
23 know, food: refreshments at different events, for room
24 rentals, for expenses, for supplies, for publicity, for
25 advertising. All of those things are very important.
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1 And I think that, in the region, we're
2 seeing that the organizations that were the most
3 successful with outreach activities, as Karen pointed
4 out earlier, did have some funding and were able to do
5 some matching funding.
6 And, lastly, I think that one of the real
7 benefits to the San Diego region is our history of
8 regional cooperation and collaboration. San Diego has a
9 long history of working with the different agencies
10 through San Diego County, pulling the cities together,
11 pulling other agencies together and the public sector.
12 And that, coupled with good communication among the
13 agencies, I think, really helped the region be as
14 successful as it was.
15 So I'm really very, very pleased to have --
16 have had SANDAG spearhead the Regional Complete Count
17 Committee. And that was by Rosalie Zarate who did an
18 excellent job, and staff at SANDAG, Karen Lamphere and
19 Anne Steinberger who just were a fabulous resource to us
20 in this effort. So I thank you for the opportunity to
21 come and make this presentation. I'll be happy to
22 answer any questions you have at some point.
23 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: Well, thank you,
24 all three of you all. And maybe what we can do is take
25 about ten minutes and -- and ask questions of you, and
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1 then we'll go to our -- our second group of speakers.
2 One of the obvious points that ran
3 consistently through your remarks, I think, would lead
4 one to the conclusion that great cities and great
5 counties are not the product of great government but the
6 product of good people doing great things together
7 through civic engagement.
8 So if we can let's say disaggregate some of
9 the data and -- and take a look at going into this
10 process, I am sure that the County and the City knew
11 their hard-to-count, hard-to-enumerate census tracks.
12 What has been our experience in the hardest-to-count
13 census tracks in terms of mail-back response? That's
14 one. Secondly, what has been your experience in terms
15 of engaging hard-to-count populations through the hiring
16 process as actual enumerators and trusted third parties
17 in this process?
18 MS. LAMPHERE: I can speak a little bit to
19 the response rates and the hard-to-enumerate census
20 tracks. And it varied across the region, but in certain
21 areas, it did go up at about the same rate as the region
22 went up. So it was obvious that the outreach activities
23 that took place there helped.
24 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: Would you say it
25 was the outreach -- what -- what impact would you say
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1 the advertising campaign? which was the first time ever.
2 MS. LAMPHERE: The national advertising
3 campaign?
4 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: Mm-hmm.
5 MS. LAMPHERE: I don't think it had too
6 much of an impact in the most difficult to enumerate
7 areas, mostly because of language differences and the
8 type of outreach that was conducted was really more
9 mainstream than were targeted specifically to
10 populations.
11 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: So more locally
12 sensitive, community-funded advertising campaigns would
13 have been more impactful?
14 MS. LAMPHERE: Definitely. And also more
15 information leading up to the campaign as to what types
16 of targeted advertising would be undertaken. Because we
17 were really kept in the dark as to what was going to
18 happen. So it was difficult for us to plan our media
19 campaign without knowing what was going to happen at the
20 national level. So more understanding of what was going
21 to happen at the national level would allow us to, then,
22 even more target our message.
23 CO-CHAIRMAN BLACKWELL: And this probably
24 will come up with the next group of speakers. But one
25 of the things we heard yesterday in Los Angeles, and one
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1 of the things I heard this weekend -- this past weekend
2 in Norfolk, Virginia, when I was talking with a group of
3 elected officials, locally elected officials, was a
4 basic concern that, in hard-to-enumerate census tracks
5 and areas, there had been a pretty aggressive
6 promotional campaign encouraging involvement by way of
7 becoming an employee of the -- of the -- the process.
8 That people came in; they took the test; they passed the
9 test; and then they were never hired.
10 And the concern was that, now, locally
11 elected officials and civic leaders were stuck with
12 explaining to these constituents what happened.
13 What's -- what's your experience there?
14 MS. LAMPHERE: I can speak to that, too,
15 because I got a lot of those phone calls. We did, you
16 know, anecdotally, find that to be the case where a lot
17 of the people were tested and a lot of people were
18 tested early, well in advance of when they would
19 actually be hired. And maybe it was a communication
20 problem or people just didn't understand that the bulk
21 of hiring could be done, you know, in March or April of
22 2000.
23 So they took the test a year before that
24 and -- and didn't here anything. But we also did hear
25 from people who were tested more recently. And they
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1 said, "I never got contacted or called back" and, you
2 know, just couldn't get information about their status.
3 So it was left to those of us with locally published
4 phone numbers to -- to answer those questions.
5 SUPERVISOR SLATER: If I could just
6 intervene, I don't have the nuts-and-bolts knowledge of
7 what goes on, but it seems to me that whoever is in
8 charge of hiring should give us an answer, because it
9 seems to me that hiring people from the community would
10 be the best way to ensure that you reach the county -- I
11 mean the count you want. Because not only do they know
12 the -- the population and they have trust levels there,
13 but they also know the other churches and the other
14 child-care providers, and so forth cetera, that would
15 get the counts that you want.
16 So how -- who would have the answer as to
17 why that fell through the cracks? Do we know?
18 MS. LAMPHERE: The Census Bureau.
19 (Inaudible) on the panel. And, you know, I don't know
20 if it was overestimation on the part of the Bureau as to
21 how many employees they would need. You know, they just
22 wanted to make sure that they had an adequate pool, and
23 then it turned out they didn't need that many. You
24 know, that might be one explanation for it.
25 SUPERVISOR SLATER: I know I kept seeing
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1 ads for census workers right up practically to the day
2 of the count. So I don't know if they had adequate
3 numbers, and they just ran the ad to ensure that in case
4 they had some shortfall or people drop off or if, in
5 fact, there was some kind of a breakdown between the
6 application process and then the hiring, selection.
7 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: That leads me to my
8 question. And that is, as we travel to different
9 communities, and even yesterday, we heard from the
10 communities in the Los Angeles area about their work
11 with the Regional Census office -- Census Bureau's
12 offices, and generally positive. But no one -- none of
13 the three of you mentioned the Census Bureau, per se.
14 And I'm curious about your work with -- interaction with
15 the Census Bureau locally.
16 SUPERVISOR SLATER: Personally, I had none.
17 MS. PERRY: I'll talk about it briefly.
18 I -- if I didn't mention it in my
19 presentation earlier, I'm sorry I neglected to do so.
20 Because certainly the local Census office staff was
21 involved and helpful in many of our -- they attended
22 most -- most of our meetings. I know that they came to
23 the City of San Diego and asked for assistance in
24 finding centers to test people, and we provided that
25 assistance.
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1 They contacted us for centers or looking
2 for locations for Questionnaire Assistance Centers, and
3 we did provide that assistance to them. Census Bureau
4 staff came to most of our meetings and were as helpful
5 as they could be, I think. We didn't have as much of a
6 contact with the Los Angeles Regional Office staff as we
7 did with the local Census staff.
8 SUPERVISOR SLATER: And probably one of the
9 reasons that I'm somewhat ignorant of the, like I said,
10 the nuts and bolts is because it would have been handled
11 by the County staff. And as I gave my comments
12 regarding the County's participation, it's clear to me
13 that the Census Bureau staff interacted with the County
14 staff or we couldn't have made all those contacts
15 through our social services agencies and Health and
16 Human Services. But if you ask me, do I have specific
17 knowledge, I have to tell you, I don't.
18 DR. MURRAY: Just two comments. First, at
19 some point, if someone has just a brief overview of how
20 you negotiated the particular military presence as a --
21 as an issue in the census, that would be kind of -- I'm
22 sure it's a very substantive issue for the City and for
23 the County.
24 But on this point that Ken Blackwell was
25 just pursuing, we've run into this several times now,
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1 this issue about the Bureau's needs for hiring. And
2 obviously, a tight labor market; they know they're going
3 to have to pay a fair amount of money. They're going to
4 have to track people. And also hiring people who have
5 credibility in the community, you know, that have this
6 local knowledge, that have confidence, and so forth.
7 That really seems to be a huge advantage to have the
8 people who know how to solicit and find their neighbors.
9 And ideally, the Bureau wants to be able to
10 match those people, indigenous, so that you get people
11 with Spanish competence and awareness of the community
12 actually working in that community.
13 Somewhat to our dismay, when we reviewed
14 the results of some of the test censuses that were done
15 before the dress rehearsals, that really didn't work out
16 quite that way. And what we would see rather
17 regularly--and I wonder if this happened here to some
18 extent--we would try to energize or the Census Bureau or
19 local community people would go to community leaders and
20 say, We need your help. And they would expend political
21 capital going out into their community, into their
22 churches, into their faith-based organizations, into
23 some kind of network that they had, and they commit
24 themselves. We are going to hire. We are going to
25 activate. And then the call wouldn't come. And then
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1 they stood there and had to answer for this absence of
2 response.
3 Sometimes the impression was left that the
4 Bureau had a national plan, and it was going by the
5 book. And when it got to local areas, it tried to
6 impose the plan by the book and didn't sufficiently have
7 a feedback mechanism where local people could say, Well,
8 wait a minute. Let's adjust for this. And they'd
9 acknowledge that, but they never fed it back into the
10 change in plans. That they didn't adapt the plan based
11 upon the kind of commentary they were getting from the
12 local area.
13 Now, is that the kind of thing you ran into
14 sometimes with hiring?
15 MS. LAMPHERE: I think so. Not only
16 hiring, but other activities as well. The five local
17 census offices, in my view, were kind of scrambling to
18 keep up with what changes from headquarters were being
19 dictated. And by the time they implemented those, they
20 had changed again, and they were scrambling to keep up
21 with those.
22 So I think an interagency communication
23 problem on the part of the Census Bureau contributed a
24 lot to that. Because I know the five offices here were
25 very active in recruiting and outreach and -- and,
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1 again, different plans. But it just seemed like things
2 were always changing from headquarters or the L.A.
3 office. And it was just hard for them to keep up with.
4 And the lack--I'm glad you brought that
5 up--the lack of flexibility and the lack of their
6 authority to change -- even -- make even minor changes
7 to policy really hampered the effective programs here.
8 MS. GREEN: I have one question.
9 Ms. Perry, I think you mentioned the targeted population
10 that you had consisting of City employees -- general
11 population of City employees and clients. And I was
12 wondering about census in schools and your teachers and
13 your students.
14 The students, as we know, would be the ones
15 in 2010 who will be the persons filling out the forms
16 for their households, probably. So I was interested in
17 hearing a little bit more about the school activity.
18 MS. PERRY: I think that's a very good
19 question. And I think the concept of the census in
20 schools I think is very, very good. I am not certain
21 how it panned out in the city of San Diego. I heard
22 mixed reports from principals and from teachers about
23 whether they got the information or didn't get the
24 information.
25 We got mixed results from the Census Bureau
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1 about when the information was going out and who it was
2 going to. And, unfortunately, because we didn't have
3 enough resources at the City to really take the time to
4 coordinate with the school districts, that was, I would
5 say, probably one of the holes in our -- in the City's
6 involvement or participation.
7 It's kind of like the Census Bureau said
8 they were going to do this with the schools. We said,
9 Okay, that part's covered. We'll focus on the City
10 employees and things that we can control and let the
11 school district and the Census Bureau worry about the
12 school district.
13 MS. GREEN: Okay. And just as a followup,
14 I was interested in finding out how you reached the
15 migrant population.
16 SUPERVISOR SLATER: That probably would
17 come more to me, although in the San Ysidro area, you
18 would probably have that -- that's a part of the city of
19 San Diego. But in the county of San Diego the Health
20 and Human Service Agencies do a lot of different
21 outreach programs. We have immunization programs
22 through our health services, and we have various
23 programs that are working with the migrant population
24 that are longstanding. And Cal-works and several of the
25 other program, we have.
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1 So we were using the social workers and the
2 eligibility workers and the other contacts that the
3 people are familiar with to -- to reach those
4 populations.
5 MS. PERRY: And fortunately, also, with
6 the -- with the fact that we did have the Regional
7 Complete Count Committee and we had the funding
8 available, many social service organizations and private
9 organizations came forward with proposals to address
10 specific populations like the Russian immigrants, for
11 example.
12 And so, because the group stepped forward
13 to deal with those, we had focus on that. We had
14 tremendous support from the Union of Pan-Asian
15 Communities to reach the more recent migrants, and I
16 know that the Union of Pan-Asian Communities also worked
17 very closely with the African-Somali communities, for
18 example.
19 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Well, thank you. I
20 want to thank this group of presenters. And I hope you
21 will remain. And the next group is -- is all here.
22 We're all assembled. And I have the -- the great
23 pleasure of introducing this next panel. But I also
24 have the duty of asking you, let's try, as best we can,
25 to limit our remarks so that we can keep our -- we can
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 39
1 have time for the kind of questions and answers that we
2 just engaged in. So I thank you.
3 And I think we're going to start with
4 Mr. Bareno, who's the Coordinator of the California QAC
5 project and the Chicano Federation. Welcome.
6 MR. BARENO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and
7 Members of the Board. Welcome to San Diego.
8 If I could just have that one chart set up.
9 Let me explain to you what -- what part we played. We
10 were the nongovernmental administrative CBO for the
11 State of California, for San Diego and Imperial County.
12 We received approximately 400,000 from the State to
13 operate Question Assistance Centers, and then interface
14 to the It's-Not-Too-Late-to-Self-Enumerate program.
15 So we -- we operated two -- two phases of
16 the California Complete Count. We reported to Mr. Mark
17 Grisby who was the Assistant Director for California
18 Complete Count, and they reported to the Governor's
19 office.
20 We -- let me explain to you. The Chicano
21 Federation is a federation of organizations, primarily
22 Latinos, that have been in San Diego for about 30 years.
23 And so, fundamentally, we have a regional system of
24 community-based agencies. And I must tell you, I'm not
25 the director. I'm a consultant to -- to the federation.
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 40
1 Mr. Ray Uzeta, the Director, was going to try to be
2 here. But in any case, that's the framework.
3 We operated 52 Questionnaire Assistance
4 Centers and one -- one primary contractor for the
5 It's-Not-Too-Late program. Within the context of the 52
6 Questionnaire Assistance Centers, our subcontractors
7 ranged from the MAAC Project, which is a
8 multi-million-dollar community-based agency, to the Sons
9 and Daughters of Guam, who, Misses -- the director is
10 here, the representatives are here, Chinese Social
11 Service Center, Center for Parent Involvement.
12 For Imperial County, since it's a large
13 area, we utilized an existing community clinic called
14 La Clinica del Pueblo which dealt with all of Imperial
15 County and specifically the migrant population there.
16 We focused in on the notion that these programs are
17 probably nine times out of ten in the hard-to-enumerate
18 areas. And we were given some excellent background in
19 the sense that the State Department of Finance
20 identified, specifically, those census tracks and those
21 hard to -- traditionally hard-to-count areas which were
22 overlaid, essentially, with the population, the client
23 base of -- of the majority of our subcontractors.
24 And let me say, I want to differ a bit with
25 the earlier comments in "that there was enough money."
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 41
1 In our case, to operate Questionnaire Assistance
2 Centers, we had a limit of $5000. So that these
3 programs that are small, to commit staff resources in
4 advance of a very slow paying process in the State of
5 California was a lot. So there never really was enough
6 money, and as fast as the State tried to pay them, it
7 was always difficult.
8 So -- and I say that from the perspective
9 that we represent the nongovernmental side. So,
10 obviously, these community-based agencies don't have the
11 similar resources that SANDAG or the county or others
12 would have.
13 We were focused under the notion that we
14 would operate Questionnaire Assistance Centers, but we
15 became kind of a catchall for outreach, because these
16 programs operate under the notion of outreach anyway.
17 They're in the -- they're in the neighborhoods. They
18 know who's who. There's a great degree of trust. And
19 so we were able to effectively reach the people that
20 they serve or are -- or are hard to count in the region
21 anyway because of their existing framework and their
22 history.
23 We were contracted with the State of
24 California to make contact directly with respect to the
25 Questionnaire Assistance Centers for 100,000 individuals
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 42
1 in San Diego and Imperial County, of which we were
2 successful of doing. Under the It's-Not-Too-Late-to-
3 Self-Enumerate we were, again, contracted to reach
4 approximately 90,000.
5 And in that case, we utilized the MAAC
6 Project, which is a major program with regional centers
7 throughout the county and essentially said, Look. Based
8 on your experience in the Questionnaire Assistance
9 Center, go do it. You know where they're at. We want
10 to encourage people to -- to self-enumerate or to remind
11 them that there's still an opportunity to -- to make
12 yourself counted.
13 We provided a great -- or relied a great
14 degree on the information programs, as you notice: the
15 posters and the handouts. We utilized just about every
16 existing formal and informal network to get the word
17 out.
18 We were effective in certain communities
19 utilizing school districts and parent groups because of
20 either connections that I have or the programs have.
21 And so I want to say, with respect to the educational
22 strategy, we were told both by the State as well as the
23 U.S. Census Bureau that there was a National Education
24 Plan to utilize the schools. But in reality, I didn't
25 see much of that. And perhaps it was there, but we
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 43
1 weren't able to take advantage of it.
2 But what we did build on was the notion
3 that parents are concerned about their kids' future.
4 And, therefore, if the message about getting counted
5 comes from that framework, it takes on a great degree
6 of -- of importance that perhaps it would not have
7 otherwise.
8 I'll let -- again, we focused in on many,
9 many language groups. We were fortunate to utilize the
10 services of UPAC. And Tania could explain all the
11 various groups beyond the primary -- our focus, which
12 was Spanish. But UPAC provided us the ability to reach
13 many, many other groups that they specialize in and have
14 quicker access to.
15 And I also want to compliment the
16 community-based agencies for responding in such a rapid
17 and -- and just great fashion. The State gave us about
18 three weeks to come up with a contracting system, get
19 people identified, get a competition in and just do a
20 whole series of things that were just almost impossible
21 to do. But the CBOs responded because I think they saw
22 the importance of -- of the activity.
23 Some of the lessons that we learned with
24 respect to those things that interest you were that, in
25 many cases, I believe that the local census offices
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1 operated effectively in the context of the local
2 manager's background or -- or some -- some staff member
3 who had a particular skill.
4 I don't think that we came together
5 necessarily as a unit. We were out there working
6 together. We knew who was who, but we found that if
7 certain people in a certain district office maybe had
8 more experience, we were able to be more effective
9 there.
10 But -- but I used to complain to the State
11 that -- that from what Sacramento sends us to what gets
12 implemented and what gets discussed gets changed nine --
13 nine to ten times. And we were always told that, Look,
14 the Governor's office is dealing with the Regional
15 Census Office in Seattle--or wherever it was--and that
16 that's going to be worked out. And by the time it got
17 resolved for us, the problem was over. We typically
18 improvised. We did something else to get the message
19 out. And -- and I think that has a lot to do with --
20 with how things are perceived.
21 With respect to hiring, we had that -- that
22 similar problem in that we were finding ourselves
23 responding for issues that related more directly to
24 Census Office. And in those cases, we will refer them
25 to Mr. Nagel or Mr. Arellano or the appropriate person.
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 45
1 But I think there was a lot of information
2 flying all over that probably is nobody's fault, because
3 when you consider that the expectation is in a year to
4 do all those things, get people hired, get them counted,
5 get the public to understand, and also instill a great
6 deal of confidence essentially in within seven months to
7 a year, I think is -- is a large task that is not easy
8 for anybody.
9 And then you overlay that with the -- the
10 whole notion about confidentiality and the whole census
11 process. So it's crazy for everybody. I think the
12 lessons that -- that I would ask you to consider is
13 that, unless there's some statutory limitation, I don't
14 know why this doesn't start two and three years in
15 advance.
16 Or that the -- the hiring of the
17 enumerators, while a burdensome process with a Federal
18 employment process that in general is slow, why don't
19 you contract that out? I mean, why do -- why does that
20 have to be done? And the other piece is that I think,
21 because this happens every ten years, I would seriously
22 consider that like in land use, you periodically --
23 local government, they modify community plans or if
24 there's a major activity that's going to change the --
25 the nature of a community, there's hearings.
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 46
1 I don't know why that the census process
2 couldn't be institutionalized into the -- into the
3 process of local government on a maybe, a five-year
4 basis or -- and what you wind up doing at the -- at the
5 last year is literally validating what you found
6 starting in the fifth year forward rather than condense
7 everything and it gets crazy.
8 The other thing for this region, the
9 message, particularly for the hard-to-counts, is a very
10 touchy thing. I admired--and I was mentioning to
11 Krista--I admired the effectiveness of the national
12 campaign and pieces focused for the African-American
13 community. I thought those were very, very effective.
14 But in border communities like San Diego,
15 there is a great degree, particularly for -- for
16 monolingual Spanish, there is a great reliance on radio
17 that emanates out of -- out of Mexico. Those are
18 essentially Mexican signals into this market. And there
19 was a reluctance because of a lack of understanding of
20 utilizing that. And for the hard-to-count population,
21 they rely a great deal on Spanish-speaking radio for
22 their source of information.
23 And so -- and I suspect probably the same
24 applies in Texas. But I think we need to think out of
25 box in terms of wanting to reach people. The other
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 47
1 piece is that, particularly for Latinos, there was a
2 great degree of consternation about that famous -- what
3 is it? Question 8? The one that asked you if were you
4 were -- that -- that caused problems to no end. And --
5 DR. MURRAY: What -- what was the question,
6 specifically? I don't remember.
7 MR. BARENO: I'll let -- I don't even want
8 to defend -- Mr. Arellano can --
9 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (From the audience,
10 inaudible comment.)
11 MR. BARENO: That caused a -- Mr. Arellano
12 is one of the local -- in any case it -- it -- it
13 created a lot of energy that could have been applied
14 elsewhere. And, again, if those questionnaires -- and,
15 again, I don't know what statutory requirements are, but
16 if the survey instrument, itself, if perhaps the
17 validation process across the country could be a little
18 bit more extensive--have hearings on it--you're going to
19 cut away almost 70 to 80 percent of the problems.
20 And, again, I think that -- that the
21 census, the -- anyway, let's get back to -- the message,
22 in terms of the African-American community, was very,
23 very effective. I mean, I just wanted to hear the next
24 one. Because whatever firm that did that was great.
25 Unfortunately for California and San Diego,
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 48
1 you have to regionalize some of those national messages.
2 And -- and that could have been worked on. And, again,
3 the CBOs formed the nongovernmental outreach side. And,
4 again, there's never enough money for them. And they
5 really, really responded tremendously.
6 The Governor and State Complete Count were
7 able to get these people paid in a time frame that is
8 against the history and traditions of the State of
9 California bureaucracy. So I needed to point that out.
10 DR. MURRAY: Thank you.
11 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Thank you. In order
12 we hear from every panelist, we're going to hold off
13 questions to the end. And so I'm going to ask
14 Mr. Rowel --
15 MR. ROWEL: Yes. Actually, I'm going to
16 make this rather brief. I'd like to thank you all,
17 Mr. Chairman and Members of the Board as well as SANDAG
18 for having me here this morning. I did want to hand out
19 some census materials that we produced for the
20 African-American community as well as the other
21 communities. And I will do that. But some of them are
22 here.
23 The mission of California Black Health
24 Network, which is the office I'm out of, is to improve
25 the health status of African-Americans in California.
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1 In pursuing this mission, CBHN provides a forum where
2 policy makers, health providers, consumers, and
3 advocates concerned about health status and access to
4 care for Africans-Americans -- African-Americans can
5 engage in problem analysis and solution building.
6 What we also strive to do is develop and
7 implement programs that will enhance the value of health
8 promotion and prevention amongst people of color. I
9 said that because one thing I discovered in working with
10 the entire outreach census program was a lot of these
11 issues had very much -- have a lot to do with health.
12 And they have to do with creating community and norm
13 changes.
14 In particular, Mr. Blackwell, the statement
15 you made about legacy, I found that to be, you know,
16 very important. Because what you have to do is you have
17 to create a system and a mechanism by which people can
18 begin to -- to gain trust in what happens in their
19 communities, particularly from an outside/inside
20 standpoint. It's always looked at that.
21 But when you enable people that are within
22 the community and agencies that are normally working
23 within that community to -- to work on something of this
24 nature, what you find is that people trust it more, and
25 they're more willing to help with it and use their
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 50
1 money, which is always good.
2 San Diego Black Health Association is
3 actually what we were under within the California Black
4 Health Network. And in particular, what that did was
5 enabled us to use our health care providers in the
6 San Diego area, the county and in the city, as well as
7 health care professionals outside of the San Diego area,
8 which could lend their expertise in areas dealing with
9 culture and -- and health.
10 And what we strived to do is expose the
11 fact that there's a disproportionately high rates of --
12 of ailments in the African-American community, which is
13 an issue. A lot of that stems from, of course,
14 socioeconomic issues, education, and some other things.
15 But if you think about it, it all actually falls into
16 census results and then becoming a part of their
17 process.
18 Our scope of work, what needed to be
19 accomplished was presentation to community groups, video
20 presentations to clinics and physicians offices,
21 collaborations with African-American churches and
22 distribution of census information to beauty shops and
23 beauty salons, or rather barber shops and beauty salons.
24 Excuse me.
25 And actually, that was one of the hardest
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1 things that we had to do. Because, as you know, with
2 beauty shops and barber shops, they are a close-knit
3 group. It is actually a hub of communication within
4 some communities. And so it's interesting that this was
5 chosen, because it allowed us to distribute video
6 information and just have it shown in the -- in the
7 waiting room or in the shop itself during peak hours.
8 So whether people were paying attention to
9 it or not, it became a part of their consciousness, you
10 know. It was something that they -- they had to face
11 and had to think about. In terms of our collaborations
12 with African-American churches, of course, we all know
13 that the faith community, particularly in the
14 African-American community in San Diego, is huge and
15 is -- is -- is extremely important. Whenever you want
16 to mobilize--excuse me--mobilize any member of
17 African-American constituents, you definitely want to
18 have them on your side.
19 And what we attempted to do was use some of
20 the avenues we already had in the -- in the faith
21 community with pastors and some deacons and, actually,
22 youth groups that we work with. What we wanted to do
23 was have a collaboration luncheon. That's how we
24 started. Because we found out that all of these
25 churches had received boxes of -- of census materials.
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 52
1 What we also found out was that most of these churches
2 weren't opening those boxes. They were actually just
3 sitting there. And it wasn't because of -- I don't
4 think it had anything to do with ignorance. I think it
5 had to do more with there were no directions as to what
6 they should do with it.
7 And then at that time, maybe they weren't
8 so sure as to how necessary it was for their population
9 at that time. So we came in right at the right time
10 because we had the collaboration luncheons. We invited
11 over 160 pastors of churches in the San Diego area
12 alone. And the turnout was pretty well.
13 And what we did is we spent time inviting
14 them to become a part of the process. But at the same
15 time, you also have to understand when you're working
16 with community organizations, and particularly the faith
17 community, it's hard to go to them and ask them for
18 something, because they have so many responsibilities.
19 They have a limited budget and, you know, they have so
20 many people to ask -- to answer to. So you have to find
21 innovative ways of wording it so that they feel that
22 they're getting something and you're getting something,
23 maybe. Right?
24 So the census was perfect, because we just
25 had to get factual information and demonstrate these
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1 things would happen and that these are necessary things
2 in our communities. Things we need like libraries,
3 clinics, supermarkets in certain areas. In terms of
4 presentations to community groups, that -- that proved
5 to be very successful too because we had an opportunity
6 to work with Neighborhood House Association. And
7 they -- you know, they have a very interesting
8 rapport--I should say--with communities.
9 In particular, they gave us space to have
10 meetings. And they also gave us an audience, which is
11 always -- you know, it's like William Shakespeare said.
12 Without the audience, you know, you're really just
13 talking to yourself. You have to have the audience.
14 So we found that a lot -- you know, a lot
15 of census events, the biggest thing was having just
16 large numbers of people there who were not necessarily
17 there to find out about the census, because you could
18 only talk so much about what -- exactly what the census
19 is. People -- people really understand the process.
20 It's just making it very convenient for them and
21 something that they feel is necessary.
22 But you want to have a lot of people at
23 your event. We had a Census Day in the park at the
24 education cultural complex in Southeast San Diego, which
25 proved to be successful in -- in getting a lot of other
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 54
1 outreach agencies involved, as well as, you know,
2 getting the word about the census out there and allowing
3 people to have a good time.
4 To wrap it up, I would like to thank, of
5 course, SANDAG and Karen Lamphere. The California
6 Complete Count Committee was very helpful. The
7 San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce was very helpful,
8 because they enabled us to use people who weren't
9 involved in the actual census process for census
10 activities, which was very good. The Alliance for
11 African Assistance. We partnered with them on a few
12 projects. Alpha of San Diego. We also partnered with
13 them. As I said, Neighborhood House Association.
14 Mr. James A. Ford and the Malcolm X Library, which
15 allowed us free space and computers and some other
16 things for census programs we had.
17 Thank you.
18 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Thank you.
19 Ms. Farley?
20 MS. FARLEY: (Inaudible) good morning.
21 Just move this closer here. My name is Tania Farley,
22 and I thank Mr. Blackwell and the Board for allowing me
23 to speak today on behalf of the efforts that the Union
24 of Pan-Asian Communities did for Census 2000 in
25 San Diego County.
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1 Again, I -- I work as a community educator
2 for UPAC. UPAC, the Union of Pan-Asian Communities, is
3 a local community-based organization with a 25-year
4 history of serving Asian Pacific Islanders and newly
5 immigrant and refugee communities into San Diego County.
6 As an organization, we serve approximately
7 60,000 individuals annually. We have a staff of 115
8 speaking over 27 languages and dialects. In early
9 March 1999, I was hired to coordinate the Asian Pacific
10 Islander Census 2000 network as part of the
11 collaborative managed and organized by the Asian Pacific
12 American Legal Consortium out of Los Angeles.
13 The statewide collaboration included
14 San Francisco, Santa Clara, Sacramento, Los Angeles,
15 Orange County, and San Diego. Our goal was to ensure
16 that our communities, our Asian and Pacific Islander
17 communities, were included in the census process and
18 that our -- our under-counted communities -- the numbers
19 would actually increase not decrease.
20 Our original project was funded by the
21 California endowment, and that's actually how I was
22 funded for a 15 -- actually, for an 18-month period, was
23 through this private foundation, monies coming in to
24 support the -- the outreach efforts that I did. Along
25 with the American -- or Asian Pacific American Legal
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 56
1 Consortium out of Los Angeles, we were also affiliated
2 with the National Asian Pacific Legal Center out of
3 Washington D.C.
4 So as a network, we were very extensive and
5 very cohesive in our efforts to make sure that our
6 communities were counted as well as included in the
7 process. With each of the agen- -- or the geographic
8 locations that I mentioned, each of us were responsible
9 for developing our own work plan depending on the needs
10 of our local communities.
11 In San Diego I initially focused outreach
12 activities to include Southeast Asian communities -- the
13 Southeast Asian communities, the Lao, Cambodian, Hmong,
14 and Vietnamese communities, as well as the Pacific
15 Islander groups, the Samoans and the Tongans.
16 These communities were -- were the most
17 under-counted in 1990. But as I began to make
18 presentations in San Diego or within our community, I
19 realized that I couldn't limit my efforts only to the
20 Asian Pacific Islander communities. That all ethnic
21 communities needed the same message. So I kind of took
22 it -- excuse me. So I kind of took on the additional
23 task of just getting the word out to all ethnic
24 communities that I could outreach to.
25 I -- in my initial effort, I -- I prepared
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1 a comprehensive Power Point presentation, and with
2 overhead projector in hand, contacted several different
3 community agencies just to say, "I have a census
4 message. Can I come in and present?" So I was at
5 community meetings. I was at community events. I was
6 in churches. I was in temples. I was accessing other
7 communities groups.
8 And, in fact, I'd like to acknowledge some
9 of the community groups that are represented here that I
10 worked with extensively. Tevesi Faapouli with Samoa --
11 Tautau Samoa of North County; Flo Boatman with the Sons
12 and Daughters of Guam club; Abdi Mohamud with Horn of
13 Africa; and also Mr. Winlove Cudal with the Filipino
14 Seniors Association. Those are just some of the groups
15 that actually assisted us in our outreach efforts to
16 this Asian Pacific Islander and emergent immigrant
17 communities of San Diego.
18 In developing this Power Point
19 presentation, I basically focused on all aspects of the
20 census process. Our communities, especially our Asian
21 Pacific Islander communities, were not informed of the
22 census. Did not know what it was. Did not know how it
23 operates here in the United States. And to be
24 effective, I focused on why it was important and also
25 how to get communities involved.
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1 Through our network, we had translated
2 material available in 16 different Asian and Pacific
3 Islander languages, and those were extensively
4 disseminated. Whether it was through community events,
5 I shared that information or those flyers and posters
6 and whatnot with community organizations as well as with
7 the Census Bureau and Census Bureau personnel that were
8 willing to further distribute that in-language and
9 material to make sure that our Asian Pacific Islander
10 communities were involved in the process.
11 My message focused on the mail-back
12 response process. And basically, I was telling folks,
13 Fill in your form that comes to your home in the mail so
14 you don't get strangers coming to your door. Within our
15 community, if you don't know who's knocking on your
16 door, the door is usually not opened.
17 So by stressing that message, "the -- the
18 mail-back response rate, the form -- or form, you need
19 to fill that form in," that was how the message was
20 delivered. And I think that's what was accepted within
21 our community, was that mail-back form was very
22 important.
23 The reason I was also very thorough in my
24 presentation was that there was too much ground to be
25 covered and too many people to reach. And I didn't want
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 59
1 to have to go back to the same group, individual, or
2 agency more than once. I wanted to move forward and not
3 keep going back to -- whether it was to -- to explain
4 the changes that were occurring or to explain why things
5 weren't happening.
6 And some of the questions that have come up
7 about the hiring practices and census in the school
8 efforts, I can address some of those based on my
9 experience. Overall, I met with over 300 community
10 groups and agencies over this time period. My outreach
11 activities included educational presentations to
12 individuals in the group -- community groups.
13 I was very involved in writing PSA
14 announcements, or public service announcements to be
15 included in event booklets. And I brought an example,
16 which I'll just hold up and share with -- with the
17 Board. Also, I wrote articles for inclusion in our
18 ethnic media sources.
19 And those media activities were translated
20 in Filipino, Vietnamese, and Somali. I also attended
21 over 60 community events to disseminate all of the
22 translated material that was available to me. I
23 basically participated in every aspect of the census
24 process from taking the test myself, from checking out
25 the phone in-line for questions if you had questions
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 60
1 once you received your form. I also called to say, "I
2 lost my form. What do I do?"
3 I wanted to make sure that I understood the
4 process so if anybody in my community had -- had
5 questions, I was able to give the information and give
6 it correctly. I also applied for every funding
7 opportunity that became available to ensure census
8 activities and efforts again included the communities I
9 was trying to outreach to.
10 As far as the local census offices, they
11 were helpful, in my opinion, as far as providing fliers,
12 posters, premium items. But the information I received
13 varied too much from office to office. And here in
14 San Diego, I actually worked extensively with four of
15 the five local offices.
16 Throughout the process, I also suggested
17 sites for QACs that would benefit our Asian Pacific
18 Islander community, coordinated QAC trained where I
19 brought in community folks to get trained and to be
20 certified as be-counted-form-assistance-persons, for
21 lack of a better way of describing that.
22 I also advertised employment opportunities
23 for the Bureau and encouraged people from our
24 communities to be hired by the Bureau, because we were
25 so -- because I felt, again, that they needed to
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 61
1 participate in that process, as well. Excuse me. I
2 also coordinated employment testing for API constituents
3 or Asian Pacific Islander constituents because, again, I
4 felt that, if our communities were not involved in the
5 process, we would not have the numbers that we need to
6 show how many of us are really here.
7 With several of the partnership
8 specialists, I co-presented at several meetings and
9 community events. We shared notices back and forth of
10 what was happening in the community. In my opinion, the
11 partnership specialists could have been or should have
12 been the core of operations. But with only four
13 dedicated to our county, they were spread very thin with
14 all the tasks required of them.
15 They were expected to be all -- to be all,
16 be everywhere, and be effective. Unfortunately for our
17 community, the API specialist--and I'm sorry--Asian
18 Pacific Islander specialist was non-effective. And I
19 realized early on that a strong educational outreach
20 effort within our community was required to ensure a
21 successful census.
22 I did not really rely on our local offices
23 for anything that I would call substantial other than to
24 get information or fliers or premium items as needed to
25 support the census effort. Most of the people that I
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 62
1 turned to for clarification or for questions was
2 basically Karen with SANDAG, and I was also -- I also
3 had access to Jerry Wong at the Regional office, him
4 being a Asian Pacific Islander advocate and census -- I
5 was going to say census muckity-muck, but Census Bureau
6 person. Excuse me. I had to say that.
7 In my doing census work, I -- I feel that
8 once the census forms hit the streets, the -- the
9 message became more varied and more difficult to follow
10 or -- or -- or was inconsistent. I did not hear about
11 advertisements on the form or the process. San Diego
12 was hit with a lot of publicity from talk-show hosts and
13 radio personalities. There was a lull in the process
14 once those forms hit the streets. And my concern was
15 for the moms and pops in their homes that were
16 non-English speakers, what were they going to do if they
17 didn't know what this form was?
18 I also had issues with the pre-census
19 letter that came out. There, a lot of people, again,
20 did not understand, whether in English or in the
21 different languages, what was to be done with that form.
22 So -- so possibly a lot of our constituents that could
23 have requested the in-language census forms missed out
24 on that opportunity because that whole letter process
25 was kind of -- you know, it was not very clear. It was
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 63
1 very confusing.
2 Also, a lot of our community folks had said
3 that they actually threw their forms out. When the form
4 came out, if they didn't know what it was for, it went
5 into the trash can. So I felt at -- that when the
6 census forms hit the streets, that I'm trying to play
7 catch-up with a lot of those that did not hear the
8 census message. And it was very frustrating. It just
9 seemed like everything kind of fell to the wayside.
10 The Be Counted forms. The Be Counted
11 forms, although I was told to wait on the use of these
12 forms until the end of March, the anticipation of -- of
13 being able to actually hand those forms out to folks
14 that we knew for a fact had thrown their forms out was
15 something we were looking forward to.
16 Once those forms became available and we
17 could freely distribute them, the folks that I had
18 invited to attend the QAC training, a lot of us took
19 those forms to community events, to churches, to
20 temples, to synagogues to help people fill their forms
21 in. We also set up opportunities for families or
22 individuals to bring their forms, if they still had
23 their forms, to church functions or to community
24 settings where we would be there to assist them with the
25 process.
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1 Some of the groups that -- that
2 collaborated with us, the Chinese Consolidated
3 Benevolent Society, the Indochinese Association, the
4 Chinese Friendship Association, as I mentioned, Tevesi
5 Faapouli with -- with the Oceanside Samoan community,
6 the Vietnamese Federation, the Filipino community, the
7 Guam community, all of them were there to support
8 census.
9 As far as keeping the census message going,
10 just as of yesterday, I received an e-mail giving me an
11 update of what are we supposed to be telling our
12 community about census folks still coming to our doors.
13 Apparently there's still a post-enumeration process
14 going on. So if there are census takers out in the
15 street, it's basically they're doing follow-up and
16 making sure that every single household is being
17 counted. So that -- that was the message as of
18 yesterday.
19 Another outreach activity that happened for
20 me was with this comprehensive Power Point presentation.
21 When I went to community groups, I elicited support from
22 community leaders to act as translators during these
23 events. So most of the presentations I did were in a
24 different language: me speaking English or me speaking
25 Samoan, since that's my primary language, or having a
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 65
1 volunteer interpreter.
2 Also, after the -- after the forms came
3 out, I received calls from the Census Bureau, I guess
4 enumerator personnel, asking for assistance with
5 volunteer translators -- volunteer translators to go
6 with them door to door. I felt for the most part, a lot
7 of the requests came from people that were very
8 insensitive to our community and insensitive to the
9 culture of the communities they were asking for support
10 with.
11 For example, I was asked to provide a
12 volunteer Asian interpreter that could speak both Lao
13 and Cambodian and to be available for four hours to hit
14 both households in one day. That's a volunteer person.
15 Totally two different languages. Not even the same
16 dialect let alone the same region in -- in Asia.
17 The census process, itself, was a huge
18 undertaking, and I feel with all the network that the
19 Union of Pan Asian communities did with the different
20 community groups, that we did make a big impact. We're
21 curious about our final numbers that will come out in
22 2001, and we appreciate the opportunity.
23 I also have written out several
24 recommendations for improvement for the year 2000 --
25 2010 is it? And basically it comes down to involving
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 66
1 community folks and community groups in the process,
2 that you can't discount local involvement from planning
3 to implementation and follow-through.
4 You also can't discount communities that
5 have different cultural needs and different language
6 needs in this process. English is not the only language
7 spoken in our community anymore. And it's very
8 important for San Diego to realize that we do have this
9 multiethnic community, and we need to be open to
10 including all people in the process.
11 Thank you.
12 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Thank you. And
13 we'll take your written comments when you want to give
14 them to us. Sorry to rush you along and rush everybody
15 along. We have three other panelists.
16 And I'm going to ask -- is it Mr. Deemert
17 (phonetic) or Diemert (phonetic)?
18 MR. DIEMERT: Deemert (phonetic). Thank
19 you. Surprised me.
20 Thank you for allowing us to have this
21 opportunity to share our -- our experience in Linda
22 Vista. I'm the Director of Bayside Settlement House,
23 and our specialty is forms assistance. And as we
24 presented our proposal to SANDAG and to Karen, our goal
25 was to use our connections.
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 67
1 We've been around since 1930. We've been
2 in Linda Vista since -- for 25 years. I'll allow my
3 compatriot here, Alma, to explain our strategies, but we
4 are basically an agency that's -- community center that
5 provides assistance to immigrant families. And our only
6 goal is that we realize that brochures do not work for
7 these folks. It's talking. Visiting. Individual
8 contact.
9 I'll let Alma, then, give the outcome.
10 I'll -- I'll pass around this (inaudible).
11 MS. MANABAT: Thank you. Grover's passing
12 around the pictures of the events that we held during
13 this census outreach. We focused on three major
14 outreach strategies. First, of course, we targeted the
15 families at Bayside already at services with programs
16 such as the Emergency Food Program, Healthy Start, Van
17 Lang Vietnamese School. We have Senior Supportive
18 Services, ESL and citizenship classes, and very -- we
19 have lots more. But with that client base, we had -- we
20 targeted about 4000 families. Therefore, the staff
21 informed these contacts about the upcoming census and
22 its importance.
23 In addition, our multilingual personnel
24 assisted with completing the forms and translating the
25 census material into six languages, Vietnamese, Chinese,
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 68
1 Hmong, Lao, Spanish and Tagalog. Our next strategy was
2 forming partnerships with other community programs.
3 Much of the success of our outreach was due, in part, to
4 the collaborative efforts with other Linda Vista
5 organizations such as Linda Vista Leaders and Building
6 Healthier Communities. These programs provided us with
7 volunteers to help disseminate information on the census
8 and the upcoming census events.
9 Linda Vista Leaders, which is based at
10 Montgomery Academy in Linda Vista, focuses on
11 encouraging youth to be part -- part of the community
12 and being leaders in the community. So with the Linda
13 Vista Leaders, we were able to help with youth outreach,
14 having them go to the parents or other students. And
15 with Building Healthier Communities, this is a
16 north-central region project of San Diego, which helps
17 disseminate information on the health insurance options
18 for children. And while our outreach workers were out
19 distributing information on health insurance options,
20 they were also including the census materials.
21 Another partnership we had was with
22 community supporters like Linda Vista McDonald's and
23 Blue Cross of California which helped with our events,
24 and they generously donated food, beverages, prizes, and
25 giveaways.
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 69
1 Our last outreach strategy was to conduct
2 census fairs with the help of Montgomery Academy, Linda
3 Vista McDonald's, and Bayside, we organized three local
4 census fairs which had food, prizes, giveaways, and
5 entertainment to provide incentives for families to join
6 and participate in the census.
7 We promoted these fairs through posters and
8 fliers, banners, T-shirts, and bench ads. Each were
9 translated into the languages that were most prominent
10 in our community. A Linda Vista -- a Linda Vista Leader
11 designed our logo, and it's presented on the T-shirts
12 and posters and the bench ads as you can see in the
13 photos. Thank you.
14 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Thank you very much.
15 (Inaudible) your remarks.
16 And our next speaker is Ms. Gulbransen.
17 Did I do that right?
18 MS. GULBRANSEN: Yes. That's really close.
19 Good morning Mister -- or Honorable
20 Co-Chairs and Members of the Board. I'm Jeri Gulbransen
21 from the City of Chula Vista. We're a city of about
22 175,000, second largest in San Diego County.
23 I'd like to thank SANDAG and the Complete
24 Count Committee for all their support during the census
25 activities. They were a critical part, I think, in
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 70
1 making what we did in Chula Vista much more effective
2 and -- and certainly much easier.
3 By the time we found out SANDAG was going
4 to be getting some money for the Complete Count
5 Committee and providing that to local agencies, we
6 already knew some of the things that the Census Board
7 would be doing: the Census -- the Census Assistance
8 Centers and some of that. And so several of us got
9 together to think of an idea.
10 And luckily we have some very innovative
11 and creative people on our staff. And we came up with
12 what we ended up calling Census 2000 Street Theater.
13 And so that's the grant that we had applied for with
14 SANDAG. With the grant money, we were able to hire a
15 producer/director who wrote two bilingual plays, each of
16 about five to ten minutes. He hired, then, bilingual
17 actors, and they rehearsed and took this production out
18 into the community.
19 The thing that we liked the best about this
20 is this really reached people where they were. They
21 went to taco shops. They went on the trolley. They
22 went to Laundromats. They went into other restaurants.
23 They did do some school presentations. They did
24 libraries, parks, cul-de-sacs. They did over 70
25 presentations throughout our community.
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1 We found it was very effective. It
2 certainly got people in our community talking about the
3 census. They directly addressed the confidentiality,
4 the fact that the census is safe, and really kind of up
5 front looked at some of the fears and some of the
6 reasons people would have about not answering the
7 census.
8 After each performance, people came running
9 up to them. We wish we would have -- that we could have
10 given them census forms, because people really wanted to
11 get census forms and fill them out right there after
12 they saw the presentation. And I do have a tape, if the
13 Board would like to see a few minutes of it, of a
14 presentation that they gave to the City Counsel during
15 the census activities.
16 It's not quite as lively as some of the
17 ones they gave on the trolley and some of our community
18 activities, so -- but if you'd like to turn your
19 attention to the screen.
20 (The video is shown.)
21 MS. GULBRANSEN: That was our Street
22 Theater. They -- the second play was all in Spanish,
23 and they -- the nice thing about this particular theater
24 group is that, because they were all bilingual,
25 sometimes they could intersperse English and Spanish;
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 72
1 sometimes it would be in all Spanish; sometimes,
2 obviously as with this one, mostly in English.
3 We found it to be a very effective way, and
4 we'd like to thank SANDAG and the Complete Count
5 Committee for helping us make that possible.
6 Thank you.
7 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Thank you.
8 Our next and final speaker is Detective
9 Martinez.
10 DETECTIVE MARTINEZ: Good morning, Board.
11 Thank you for having me here. My name is Peter Martinez
12 with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Gang
13 Suppression Unit.
14 Approximately towards the end of '99,
15 Mr. Richard Arellano from the Chula Vista Census Office
16 called us and -- called me and asked me: What kind of
17 information can we pass on to our census staff when they
18 go out to the neighborhoods to conduct their census
19 information?
20 At that point, I also called on -- upon Mo
21 Parga from the San Diego Police Department Gang Unit,
22 Carlos Valdida from Chula Vista Police Department and my
23 partner, Mike Spire, who has the Gang Violence
24 Suppression Grant from Supervisor Cox which she assisted
25 us in getting.
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1 Based on all that information, we met with
2 Mr. Arellano on April 3rd to get a complete, thorough
3 information of what we needed to put out. And on
4 April 11th of 2000, we ended up putting out the training
5 presentation, gang awareness, to approximately over 75
6 people in the City of Chula Vista.
7 The training that we wanted to -- to give
8 out was basically a gang awareness in the South Bay
9 area, of problem areas, how to -- how to do their job as
10 safely as possible. And by doing their jobs as safely
11 as possible, we gave them a information package of the
12 gangs that are in that area; of -- also of the different
13 types of ethnic groups gangs that are also in that area.
14 At the same time, we also passed out informational
15 areas, such as hunter blocks, of where your gang
16 problems are from certain gangs -- from certain gangs in
17 those areas.
18 We also brought out visual aids such as
19 clothing that certain gang members wear throughout the
20 neighborhoods. We also had a video of presenters giving
21 gang presentations. And we also had writings so that
22 the -- that the people we were presenting this could get
23 a knowledgeable information of what was going on.
24 What we came in -- into -- what we came
25 together was, that one, we had to give them the area of
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 74
1 where the gang problem was. Two, that it would be
2 safe -- to be done safely, that everybody should wear
3 neutral colors. The reason why is because certain gangs
4 claim certain colors. And if another color comes in
5 into their gang neighborhood, there's going to be a
6 problem. So we emphasized on that that everybody should
7 wear a neutral color, which Mr. Arellano presented and
8 informed their staff of how -- what -- what colors that
9 they should wear.
10 Also, we also gave them the information
11 that if there was a problem street that they saw when
12 they were going to go and conduct their information
13 gathering, that maybe they should go ahead and leave
14 that area and come back at a -- at a later date, maybe
15 in a couple hours. Then maybe that area would be
16 cleared up where they can go into.
17 One thing that they would have to -- two
18 things -- there was two things that -- that the gang
19 areas had to receive. One was -- is they would have to
20 give respect to the gang members, to the residences as
21 giving them good information. They would -- these --
22 these neighborhoods had to know that, by them completing
23 their census information card, that one, they would get
24 so many resources from City and Counties to enhance
25 their areas, to enhance their neighborhood, to make them
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1 a lot nicer, a lot more beautiful, to give them schools
2 and so on. And that's one thing that -- that we were
3 trying to inform them how to get that out.
4 Also is, if they were approached by gang
5 members, basically, the -- what to do and what not to
6 do. Don't wear expensive jewelry. Anything that's
7 going to attract them to you, don't -- just don't wear
8 it.
9 Also, they had the vests, that if they can
10 also wear the vests so that they can show everybody in
11 that neighborhood, Hey, this is what we're doing. We're
12 not cops. We're not any- -- anything that's going to
13 create a problem. And then also to go in in -- in a
14 high number. Instead of having one or two people go
15 down one side of the street, make a -- have it four or
16 six or maybe even eight and ten. In those areas, we
17 were able to advise them and give them the information
18 of -- of what trouble areas needed to have more of the
19 census staff there.
20 Our presentation was approximately three --
21 three hours long. We -- we try to handle all -- all the
22 areas in the South Bay. We really emphasize on the
23 South Bay area because that's where all the
24 investigators were from. And then we had a question and
25 answer.
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1 To make it more -- more -- to have it more
2 information go out, it would have been better to have
3 also a North County sector, an East County sector, maybe
4 a coast sector so that we can make all this
5 information -- have it possible for everybody else
6 throughout the whole county.
7 Our main focus was in the South Bay area
8 because that's where our investigators were, and the
9 Chula Vista office is the one that -- that informed us.
10 But we gave them our phone numbers in case they wanted
11 to increase their knowledge or to get information from
12 other parts of the -- of the county or cities that we
13 were able to give those phone numbers out to the other
14 area investigators that work in those respective
15 agencies.
16 All in all, it was -- I was really -- I
17 believe the presentation went out very well, and all the
18 questions were really done fine. And I want to thank
19 you all, and thank you.
20 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Thank you very much.
21 I want to thank all the members of the panel.
22 And, unfortunately, we have very few
23 minutes left for questions. And I'll see if -- we'll
24 start off this side (indicating). David?
25 MR. WHITLEY: Just a comment. It seems to
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1 me that, first of all, you've done a tremendous job.
2 Just generally comment on what's happened in San Diego.
3 There are always going to be some glitches and things
4 you want to do differently. One of the things I've
5 observed is we should be thinking about the census
6 sooner than we think about it.
7 And I wonder if there's just a comment or
8 two that maybe looking to SANDAG -- Joey, if you have a
9 comment on that. Would -- would more lead time be
10 helpful? And Supervisor Slater or Karen, comments on
11 that?
12 MS. LAMPHERE: I think more lead time would
13 be very helpful; and also, as much as possible, sticking
14 to the plan once it's made. And also, again, I believe
15 it was your comment about giving the local census
16 offices a little bit of flexibility to tailor local
17 plans.
18 SUPERVISOR SLATER: I'd like to echo those
19 comments. And, as well, I think that all of the
20 presenters that had hands-on information, starting with
21 Augie Bareno and going along with Bill Rowel and Tania
22 and everyone else, they gave you very practical
23 on-the-street suggestions that I think -- I would
24 suggest you take a hard look at all of their
25 suggestions, because I think they will help us.
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1 And I think that that authority for the
2 local agencies to make mid-course corrections is
3 critical if you want to have a really successful
4 program. At some point -- I did get the information on
5 the military, because there was a question outstanding,
6 and I can give it now or give it later.
7 DR. MURRAY: I'd just like to hear very
8 briefly --
9 SUPERVISOR SLATER: Okay.
10 DR. MURRAY: -- what was the particular
11 difficulty of that and how did you resolve it?
12 SUPERVISOR SLATER: Well, I can't -- I
13 can't speak directly to that. I can tell you that the
14 process was handled as described in Appendix D, on page
15 D-1 of the Collection and -- and Processing Procedures.
16 And basically those who were stationed and physically in
17 the San Diego sector were counted, whether they were on
18 the installation or at their homes. And families
19 members were counted, if they were here, here, and if
20 they were at their primary residences, they were counted
21 there.
22 And those who were deployed on ships were
23 in the Armed Force overseas count. They did not have a
24 local count. They were counted nationally. The local
25 count here for those stationed here was 111, zero, one,
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1 one, and the -- the national was 515,000. And there was
2 no differentiation or breakdown for ethnic groups within
3 the overall count. They were just counted as -- as an
4 overall population is.
5 DR. MURRAY: That's (inaudible).
6 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: I have a question,
7 and I know how broad this is and -- and how limited the
8 time was. And we -- we have that wherever we go. There
9 was one group that was not addressed, specifically. And
10 we talked about immigrant communities and non-English
11 speaking communities, but what about migrants? And can
12 someone sort of address that?
13 MR. BARENO: There were two parts to that.
14 The -- the California Complete Count had a national or
15 state-wide agreement with La -- I believe, it's
16 La Cooperativa from Sacramento, which focused in on
17 migrant workers. And then we utilized the Clinica in
18 Pueblo for those in Imperial County. So statewide there
19 was a specific effort designed to reach them under the
20 assumption that they're very, very hard to reach anyway.
21 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: If you know, what --
22 what, if any -- did you have cooperation with the
23 farmers, the growers themselves? Was that an issue?
24 MR. BARENO: That -- that -- that
25 probably -- well, from the experience at Imperial
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 80
1 County, we learned that, in some cases, we had to --
2 they had to provide alternate places for the
3 information.
4 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Right.
5 MR. BARENO: Again, in the farm, you
6 presume it's a business, and that's not what they're
7 intended to do. So it was a problem at least on a small
8 scale. I suspect that, if you talked to the Governor's
9 Office, they would would have a -- a broader look at the
10 problems encountered. But I know the problems did
11 exist.
12 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: We've seen it in
13 other places and -- and heard of even horror stories,
14 out-and-out discouraging, threatening cooperation
15 because of housing conditions. So, therefore, threats
16 of job loss if you participated because the grower would
17 say, you know, We can't keep you in this -- you're
18 living in substandard housing. And if they know you
19 live in this substandard housing and there's ten people
20 living in a structure for two, then -- et cetera,
21 et cetera.
22 So I wanted that addressed.
23 SUPERVISOR SLATER: Very briefly, if I
24 could address that as well, I know there was major
25 difference between the 1990 count and this year in terms
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 81
1 of the migrant serving organizations who were on-board
2 with the census this time, where as last time they were
3 not.
4 And so it was almost opposite. Last time
5 we had them on the opposing side. This time they were
6 on -- on the census side. And I think the education
7 campaign and the -- the involvement of the various
8 ethnic communities and the community-based organizations
9 make a huge difference. And I agree with your comments.
10 I think that the Farm Home Advisory -- maybe I can find
11 out from an Agricultural Division of the County, I can
12 find out from those areas what, if any, difficulties we
13 encountered.
14 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Thank you.
15 Lorraine, do you have --
16 MS. GREEN: Just one question. I saw the
17 Street Theater skit dealt very effectively with the
18 issue of confidentiality, and I know you found different
19 ways of dealing with it in your own communities. And
20 I'm wondering if you think there's anything further that
21 the Census Bureau could do looking at 2010 in the area
22 of confidentiality so that starting right up front, we
23 can deal with the issues that are most troubling.
24 MS. LAMPHERE: One thing I can think of is
25 I think the Census Bureau pounded that message in pretty
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 82
1 we'll, and, in fact, I heard some comment that they were
2 protesting too much. That you know, Really, really,
3 we're going to keep it confidential. But one thing that
4 I think would help would be to have that message, a very
5 simple message, in many, many different languages, and
6 get that message out in as many languages as possible
7 early.
8 Because it's really the language thing that
9 is the -- the problem. Those are the groups that are
10 most mistrustful, but those are the languages that the
11 least amount of census information is available in.
12 MR. ROWEL: I would also say, you know,
13 make as big a deal about the results as you did in
14 encouraging people to, you know, fill it out. Make sure
15 that there's a good followup on what was actually done.
16 Otherwise it's -- to them it's like, Well, why did I --
17 you know, why did I go through the trouble?
18 MS. FARLEY: As far as the confidentiality
19 in the Asian Pacific American communities, I really
20 didn't see it as a big issue. And I -- I actually
21 down-played the confidentiality message because the
22 effort was more to educate the community on the
23 importance of census and why it's important for our
24 communities.
25 Most of the immigrant communities were
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 83
1 familiar with some type of census from their own
2 countries, and they knew that it had some broader --
3 there was some broader reason for it. So
4 confidentiality real- -- really wasn't a focus. In
5 fact, it was just -- we mentioned it, but we -- we
6 didn't dwell on it.
7 So it was almost like a non-issue. We
8 talked more about why it was important to participate
9 and what the outcomes will be and the benefits will be
10 for the communities.
11 DR. MURRAY: Just one sort of
12 observation/summary comments. A., I very much
13 appreciate and am impressed by the willingness, and
14 skill, and the creativity of individuals who got
15 involved on the local level as we've heard from this
16 panel in particular. It's dedication and it's community
17 service of the highest order, and I think it pays off.
18 I was particularly impressed with the
19 remarks of Augie Bareno. This was -- I got five good
20 ideas right out of this I got listed here that I think
21 actually we're going to pay very serious attention to
22 those. They're very specific, very concrete, and very
23 reasonable ways of, I think, improving this process.
24 That was very impressive.
25 The thing that -- that keeps occurring to
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 84
1 me, though, listening to the various -- we have a
2 tendency to treat the census as a single problem, and
3 then we focus on the hard-to-enumerate communities where
4 we know language barriers, confidentiality issues and
5 the rest are there. But the diversity of problems we
6 have -- we have to keep aware of as we've understood.
7 For -- for instance, on this presentation
8 on gangs, there are different reasons why people don't
9 participate. And I think we need to be a little more
10 subtle about what all those reasons are. It is often
11 times people who are well-intentioned but sometimes
12 forget. Well, they need one kind of impetus to
13 participate, civic engagement.
14 Some people are simply apathetic. They
15 really don't care about their community. They're really
16 moving on to something else. Well, they have to be
17 reminded and probably drawn in with a little more
18 education. Some people are fearful. We have
19 confidentiality messages. When they become aware, they
20 then want to and get enthusiastic about it.
21 But there are other parts of the community
22 that are extremely problematic. They don't want to
23 participate, even when they know about it. Even when
24 they're educated. They have their reasons. And this
25 occurs on either end of the socioeconomic scale.
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 85
1 They're very rich. They're affluent. They've
2 disengaged. They have gated communities. They have no
3 particular incentive on many occasions. And we've seen
4 a small and troubling tailing off in engagement and
5 participation on the part of that community that resents
6 government intrusion sometimes, or simply doesn't feel
7 connected to the wider community because they somehow
8 feel they transcend it. They are a special kind of
9 problem.
10 And the other end of the scale, as we heard
11 from Detective Martinez, there are neighborhoods where
12 there are people actively impeding our capacity to
13 engage with that community, whether it's because of
14 lawlessness, whether it's because of concerns about
15 their status.
16 Sometimes there are people who are simply
17 not willing to be engaged in the wider community.
18 That's a very special kind of problem. And it is not
19 fair, I think, to census workers to expect them to
20 jeopardize themselves. And we know from nationwide
21 stories, on occasions, this did happen.
22 It's not clear to us exactly how we're
23 supposed to address that. Community engagement.
24 Activating people who know. That's probably the most
25 valuable. But do you think in the long run, Detective
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 86
1 Martinez, was census able to overcome these impediments,
2 or in some sense did the gangs and the difficulties and
3 the threats have some impact that even still we had
4 difficulty overcoming that prevented these communities
5 from being engaged?
6 DETECTIVE MARTINEZ: I think what we really
7 had to emphasize was the awareness of -- of a citizen
8 being aware to -- to be aware of their surroundings a
9 lot more when we -- when we were able to give them this
10 information. I think if they didn't have the
11 information, say, of gang areas or of gang problems, I
12 don't think that the information would have gotten to be
13 able to get more calculated even more better.
14 I think the information -- and -- and by
15 them being -- having the neutral colors, it gave them
16 more of -- I wouldn't say like a security, but to make
17 sure that, okay, basically, Gang members, these people
18 are here to help you. They're not here to create a
19 problem, to gather information that's going to be passed
20 on to somebody else. They're here to help you and
21 they're here to help your community and to make it a lot
22 better.
23 And that was their main focus. And I think
24 by the presentation and the information that we were
25 able to hand out, it -- it made it a lot better. For it
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 87
1 to work for 2010, like I said, go out and approach it in
2 the other portions of the county 'cause every county,
3 every city has their own little unique problem.
4 And so if you get those investigators to
5 pass that information about their unique -- unique
6 gangs, then -- then you'll know how to approach a lot
7 better. Same thing with your other states throughout
8 the United States. But I think the information was
9 passed on good in the end. They took it in hand.
10 DR. MURRAY: Listened to the people who
11 were there?
12 DETECTIVE MARTINEZ: Yes, they did.
13 MR. WHITLEY: Gil, I wanted to say, your
14 comment earlier is right on the money, in my opinion,
15 which is the whole issue we're here about which is money
16 ultimately coming back to San Diego and -- and people in
17 this community. I think you've done a tremendous job.
18 The laboratory of ideas that -- that occurs in places
19 like San Diego will be shared with other communities
20 around the country.
21 I can't tell you how many times I've been
22 at hearings like this and I have a deja vu feeling
23 because I think, well, this is quite remarkable what
24 you've done in San Diego. I would just encourage you to
25 continue it in some capacity. Don't count on the
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1 Federal government to do the work for you, but look to
2 yourselves to find your own strength to accomplish these
3 things.
4 I think that -- my observation is exactly
5 as you said earlier. This is a local issue. The census
6 is local. My thought--I discussed this with our
7 Executive Director--about what about states? Is there a
8 role for the states that they should assume more of a
9 role in? And there probably is. But mandating that out
10 of Washington is not a great idea I don't think.
11 So to Californians to count Californians is
12 very important and to not give up the fight in counting
13 yourselves. Because I think it has brought together
14 your community in a way that is quite remarkable. And I
15 think there's a lot of strength that can be accomplished
16 in the diversity that exists in this community as an
17 example for other communities to follow.
18 Other communities in our country will
19 increasingly be more and more diverse. So we'll have to
20 look to California to tell us how to do this. And we
21 appreciate very much your comments here today.
22 Thank you.
23 MR. BARENO: Mr. Chairman?
24 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: Yes?
25 MR. BARENO: Something that's really
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 89
1 important that's been bothering me. I'd kind of like to
2 share it with you. I think probably the biggest
3 challenge for all of us, particularly your Board, is
4 fulfilling this great expectation that the census is,
5 indeed, going to change people's quality of life. I
6 think it's important--we've done this in Spanish--to
7 remind people, that it is just an additional block.
8 But that ten years down the road, they're
9 going to be after all of us, because essentially their
10 lives don't change all that much. And I think it's
11 important to -- to really say, We're building something
12 here, and the more blocks we get there, the stronger the
13 house is going to be. But this is no panacea. This is
14 something we have to do.
15 So in ten years, I want them to be after
16 you, not me.
17 DR. MURRAY: That is a central issue, and I
18 understand that one particularly. Sometimes the census
19 process, in order to encourage people has been offered
20 as though there were a chicken in every pot. I mean,
21 all you need to do is fill out this form, and the
22 cornucopia will open.
23 That is misleading to some degree, but I
24 really believe this last thing you said. One block. I
25 think we can see it as one rung, and often times the
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 90
1 first rung on the ladder. What it does is it enables
2 people who are not enfranchised, not part of the
3 community, fearful and not engaged to find a reason of
4 someone reaching out to encounter them, to offer the
5 hand, to make contact.
6 And ideally, we think that will leave
7 behind a structure, a residue of some sort of engagement
8 that will then be a pathway to follow towards
9 self-governance, greater participation, involvement in
10 the schools, involvement in their own political
11 representation. And that that can grow. It will grow
12 if the seed is there. It's about all that we can hope
13 to offer at this point, but that's a good first step.
14 CO-CHAIRMAN CASELLAS: I want to thank all
15 the members of the -- of the panel. And -- and let me
16 just point out that -- that Census 2000 reversed a
17 30-year trend in the response rates. And -- because for
18 every census since 1970, the response rate has dropped
19 and dropped significantly.
20 For the first time since 1970, that trend
21 was reversed, and we got a 65 percent response rate.
22 You beat that here handily. And so I congratulate you
23 for that, because that is something that's quantifiable
24 and it's something that you can look at and point to as
25 great success in part because of an ad -- first-time
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1 paid ad campaign, in part because of greater community
2 partnerships at all levels throughout the country,
3 starting a number of years ago with these various
4 advisory commissions and committees at the local and
5 national level and -- and greater, although not the
6 best, flexibility, but greater flexibility.
7 And so it is a local effort, and it is a
8 local success story because of that. And finally, I
9 think you are to be commended, because I've always
10 talked about the census as really a family portrait.
11 And it's a portrait of -- of us as an American family.
12 And just like a family portrait, where your brother or
13 your sister or your aunt or uncle or somebody's not in
14 that portrait, you know it's not a complete family
15 portrait.
16 And you've really done a magnificent job of
17 making your family portrait for this area a more
18 complete one, and -- and we thank you for that and
19 commend you for it. And thank you all for being here.
20 And as I said, our record is open through the month of
21 July.
22 Thank you very much.
23 (Whereupon, at 11:07 a.m. the hearing
24 was concluded.)
25
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1 State of California)
:
2 County of San Diego)
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 I, Denise L. McConnell, Certified Shorthand
10 Reporter in and for the State of California, do hereby
11 certify that the foregoing Field Hearing was reported by
12 me in shorthand at the time and place herein named; that
13 said hearing was then transcribed through computer-aided
14 transcription, and the foregoing transcript contains a
15 true record of said Hearing.
16 In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand
17 on this 3rd day of July, 2000.
18
19
20
21
22 Denise L. McConnell
CSR No. 11508
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25
JAN WHITE & ASSOCIATES (619)234-0991, 1-888-311-0991 93
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U.S. Census Monitoring Board
Presidential Members |
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4700 Silver Hill Road
Suite 1250 – 3
Suitland, MD 20746 |
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Phone: (301) 457-9900
Fax: (301) 457-9901
comments@cmbp.census.gov |
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