The Lindale city limit sign on Farm-to-Market 16 reads a population count of 4,818. (Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

With the 2020 census coming up, local officials across Smith County are making moves to ensure that this year’s count is as accurate as possible.

The Smith County Commissioners Court recently appointed two members to the Smith County 2020 Census Complete Count Committee, and is recruiting more representatives from across the county.

The committee will include more than a dozen elected officials and community members who’ll work on strategies to maximize participation in the census.

The census helps determine the allocation of millions of dollars in federal infrastructure funding. It also is used to determine how many legislative representatives a region gets.  

JoAnn Hampton, Smith County commissioner for Precinct 4, was appointed to the Smith County 2020 Census Complete Count Committee. She said underparticipation in the last census (which reported Smith County as having a population of 227,727) may have cost the county federal funding.

“We have so many people that have this fear of filling out that paperwork,” Hampton said. “History tells you that; people just don’t do it. When people don’t fill out you have to worry about your population being represented correctly.”

Information sessions and canvassing events to inform the community about the census are expected to get underway in the coming months, Hampton said.

Pat Schlau, mayor of Winona, a city of about 600, said her community is most likely undercounted.

“I think we kind of missed out,” Schlau said. Winona’s population decreased in the 2010 census, but Schlau says that’s not accurate. Throughout the years, the city has seen an increase in rental properties and younger couples moving in, she said.

In 2010, the census counted 96,900 people in Tyler. At the time, then-city manager Mark McDaniel argued the city had a population of at least 100,000.

The city of Tyler, which is expected to be represented on the Smith County 2020 Census Complete Count Committee, is making sure this year that doesn’t happen. Samuel Brady, GIS technician with the city, said Tyler is optimistic about this coming census.

“The city continues to grow rapidly and is actively working with its key partners to better understand and record that growth,” Brady said.

The Census Bureau has been planning “the most robust marketing and outreach effort in census history” for the upcoming census, at a cost of about $480 million, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. That number is more than $100 million higher than was spent in 2010.

Historically, certain demographics have been more difficult to count than others. What the census considers “complex households,” such as renters, transient populations or children living with grandparents or other relatives, are often the hardest to record.

“Historically, for a variety of reasons, some groups of people are undercounted,” said Kevin Manning, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Commerce. “Undercounting problems on the census is not new. The U.S. census and other censuses around the world have struggled with this issue for decades.”

For the 2020 census, the department added a question regarding citizenship in the survey, to the disdain of immigration activists who said it could discourage many in immigrant communities from participating.

Others, often in rural communities, have had a history of not participating due to their lack of trust in government entities.

“Individual records are not shared with anyone, including federal agencies and law enforcement entities,” Manning said. “By law, the Census Bureau cannot share respondents’ answers with anyone — not with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not with the IRS, not with the FBI, not with the CIA, and not with any other government agency.”

See and purchase photos from the event here.

TWITTER: @edwrdmoreno