Stand up and be counted -- it'll be quick and well worth it
Six questions: That's all some Gilberts residents will be asked during this month's special census.
Village leaders promise the people asking the questions won't take much time, and they won't be probing. So please, have patience and answer the door when they knock on it.
This week, 20 enumerators will start their part-time jobs and call on the families living in 1,800 Gilberts homes. The quicker the questions are answered, the quicker they will be out the door and you can go back to eating dinner or watching television.
"We'll be asking people their names, their relationships to the people living in the household, their genders, their ages, their races and whether they are Hispanic," said Marlene Weisrock, a supervisor for the U.S. Census Bureau.
"It shouldn't take that much time at all."
If everything goes according to plan, all the doors will be knocked on within three weeks, and 95 percent of the residents living in the Timber Trails, Gilberts Glen, Gilberts Town Center, Timber Glen and Woodland Meadows neighborhoods will be contacted.
"We'd like to have a 100 percent response, but there will be snowbirds who spend the winter in Florida, and people who just won't answer our questions to deal with," she said.
The non-responders will lose out, and so will village coffers. Village trustees called for the special census, believing the additional residents who moved to the Northern Kane County community in the last three years would bring in more state revenue. Motor fuel-tax and state income-tax dollars are calculated according to the number of residents a community has.
Gilberts has been a growing community for a decade. The new homes and residents create more of a demand for police and public works services, Village President Tom Wadja has said.
He and village board members could have waited for the national count in two years, but they need the money now for more police officers, squad cars and public works employees.
The enumerators were trained for three days. Many of them live in neighboring communities. When they knock on doors, they will have a U.S. Census Bureau badge and a black bag. They'll work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
"We realize people work, so we hope most of the families will be contacted from 4 to 9 p.m.," Weisrock said. "Any resident who has a question or concern can call me at (847) 551-1289."
The employees will work from a rented office in town.
She is hoping all the families will be contacted and the numbers double-checked within a month. When the information is collected, the numbers will be sent to the census bureau's office in Washington, D.C. Then they will be verified by employees in the bureau's Chicago office.
The final results should be known by the end of March, she said.