Central Cities’ Census Falls Short; Officials Meet to Refigure Strategy : Demographics: Only about six of 10 households in Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster have completed and returned forms. The government’s goal is 70%.

Troubled by the modest number of census forms trickling in from central Orange County, civic leaders from Santa Ana and several other communities met Wednesday with U.S. Census Bureau officials to draw up a strategy for prodding residents to complete and mail back the questionnaires.

Only about six of 10 households in Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster have returned the forms, well below the 70% goal set by the Census Bureau, authorities said.

Census officials say they hope to work with community groups and dispatch their own troops to get out the message in specific neighborhoods that have recorded the poorest performance.

In Santa Ana, for instance, officials have agreed to target several pockets where the return rate has been as low as 42%. They plan this weekend to set up tables at a few of the local markets there and offer assistance and encouragement to people unfamiliar with the census forms.

Authorities also said they will try to recruit influential residents in targeted areas and have them go door to door to encourage their neighbors to participate in the census. City officials said they also plan to continue their promotional efforts, which have included distributing fliers and informational brochures and holding public events.

“We’d much rather use our resources at the front end,” Fernando Tafoya, the Census Bureau’s district manager in Santa Ana, said during a press conference at its Orange County headquarters. “It will prove a lot less costly if we get people to return their forms now” instead of having a census employee knock on the door.

If more of the forms aren’t returned by the beginning of May, the agency will have to hire more people than expected to mount a massive door-to-door head count that begins May 3 and continues into the summer.

“We’ve got 100% of all the citizens in the jail counted,” J. Tillman Williams, vice mayor of Garden Grove, noted during the press conference. “They’ve all been counted. Now we need you.”

Even as local officials voiced such pleas, some area residents continued to wait for a census form to even arrive in the mail.

Residents in several sections of Santa Ana have not received questionnaires. In Stanton, meanwhile, about one in seven households have not gotten a census form, Mayor Paul Verellen said.

He blamed a “peculiarity of the postal system,” noting that most of those who did not receive a questionnaire live in sections of the city that have mailing addresses in Anaheim or Garden Grove. But the mayor expressed hope that all the residents would get their forms in the coming days. Postal Service officials could not be reached for comment.

While the return rate has lagged mostly in central sections of the county populated by low-income and Spanish-speaking residents, some enclaves for the well-to-do have also performed poorly.

In South County, for instance, the return rate hovers around 63%. Residents of San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano have done worse, with some neighborhoods in those cities recording percentages in the mid-50s, according to William Bellamy, census district director for the South County.

“It doesn’t follow the pattern we’re seeing elsewhere in the county,” Bellamy said. “I cannot put my finger on the reason for it.”

Authorities have remained most concerned, however, with the rate of return in cities such as Santa Ana, where less than 56% of the residents have returned census forms.

Santa Ana Councilman Miguel Pulido said he fears that the city is facing “a potential crisis” because of the large number of Latino newcomers who might go uncounted. He said that if a sizable percentage is missed he might urge Santa Ana officials to join Los Angeles, New York and several other municipalities in their lawsuits against the federal government’s handling of the census.

But he and fellow Councilman Ron May also noted that there are some encouraging signs for the city, where about half the residents are Latino. At a similar point during the 1980 census, only about 39% of the households in the city had returned their census forms, they said.

CENSUS PERFORMANCE

The 1990 census has had a mixed showing in Orange County and elsewhere. Several areas of the county have return rates exceeding the bureau’s goal of 70% by May 3, but others have fallen far behind the pace.

CENTRAL--The lowest overall rate of return has been from central Orange County cities such as Santa Ana (55.6%), Stanton (56.7%), Garden Grove (64.6%) and Westminster (66.4%)

NORTH--The county’s best overall rate of return at 67.7%, about the same as the West sector . Census official Joe Montes predicts that the area, which includes Anaheim, Fullerton and six other cities, will reach the bureau’s goal of 70% sometime in the next two weeks.

SOUTH--Overall, 63.7% of the households have returned forms, but areas such as Leisure World have topped 80%. Several neighborhoods in San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente have turned in only about 55% of their forms.

WEST--More than 67% of forms returned. While people in Sunset Beach have returned only about 20% of their forms, Leisure World in Seal Beach has turned in a strong performance of 88.1%. Neighborhoods in Los Alamitos have returned more than 80%.

CALIFORNIA--About 58% of the forms have been returned, with Los Angeles (58.3%), San Jose (57.1%), San Francisco (61.7%) and San Diego (60.8%) among the urban areas still far below census bureau expectations.

NATIONWIDE--About 62.3% have returned questionnaires.

Source: Census Bureau