County Leads State in Response to Census Tally

Buoyed by strong efforts in Oxnard and Camarillo, Ventura County residents are responding to the 2000 Census in extraordinary numbers as Monday’s deadline for returning the questionnaires approaches.

About 71% of the county’s 257,912 households have returned census forms, the highest rate in the state, officials said. That compares with 64% for California and 61% nationwide.

Still, with six days left, none of the county’s 10 cities has yet reached its 1990 rate of mailed returns--the benchmark from which the U. S. Census Bureau mounts a final six-week, door-to-door push to count every resident.

“We’re doing well,” said Howard Rivera, assistant manager of the bureau’s Ventura office. “And the community groups are still doing a lot of outreach for us.”

By Monday, Rivera hopes that Ventura County will have surpassed its 76% return rate of a decade ago and reached its 81% goal for this census.

Already, some cities have nearly reached the 1990 standard.

After a $230,000 city push, Oxnard’s return stands at 68%, just one percentage point below its final mailed returns in 1990. Officials say that’s because Oxnard has already found 1,700 households that might have eluded a standard census count. Those residents live in garages or share housing with residents of record.

“I’m not surprised,” said Karl Lawson, coordinator of the Oxnard census outreach. “This is probably our No. 2 priority behind public safety because it affects whether we get our fair share of tax money for the next decade.”

About $180 billion in federal money is distributed to state and local governments each year based on population. States with many immigrants have argued after each recent census that their counts were low. California figures that about 800,000 residents were missed in 1990, costing it $2.2 billion a year.

The Oxnard effort was headed by 24 city employees working evenings and weekends since census forms were mailed March 13. They have used three motor homes to stop at 65 to 70 locations, Lawson said.

In addition, the social service agency El Concilio del Condado de Ventura has worked Oxnard’s churches and schools to reach reluctant registrants. And the California Rural Legal Assistance poverty law firm has searched the fields to sign up farm workers who in many cases are Indians who do not speak English or Spanish.

“They would be invisible without this,” Lawson said.

Camarillo ranks highest of all local cities in census responses--77% so far.

“We also had the highest return 10 years ago, when we were one of the highest cities in the state,” Assistant City Manager Larry Davis said. “The reasons are just that the population is aware of it and responds to it. Generally, we have the education level and type of community where residents know it’s worthwhile.”

Camarillo’s only special promotion of the census was to mention it in quarterly newsletters to residents, Davis said.

Census workers, however, worked closely with Latino organizations in Camarillo, said Rosa Martinez-Sotelo, who has coordinated local government registration efforts for more than a year.

“In Camarillo, a lot of the Latino residents are fluent and have been here a long time,” she said. “What I did was work with those who may get the form and look at it and throw it away or be afraid of it.”

Local cities contributed to a countywide registration effort. But most also ran their own campaigns, Martinez-Sotelo said.

Fillmore and Oxnard were particularly aggressive, while Santa Paula, which also has a Latino majority, took a different approach, she said.

“In Oxnard and Fillmore, they went out to the people,” she said. “In Santa Paula, they set up a questionnaire assistance center and hoped people would come to them.”

Thousand Oaks, Ojai and Ventura also had no special campaigns, she said.

By late Monday, the results were returns of 77% for Camarillo, compared with final mailed returns of 80% in 1990; 75% for Moorpark, compared with 79% in 1990; 74% for Thousand Oaks, compared with 80% in 1990; 73% for Simi Valley, compared with 77% in 1990; 71% for Ventura, compared with 78% in 1990; 71% for Fillmore, compared with 75% in 1990; 70% for Ojai, compared with 77% in 1990; 68% for Oxnard, compared with 69% in 1990; 65% in Port Hueneme, compared with 69% in 1990; and 65% in Santa Paula, compared with 77% in 1990.

After the final mailed results are in on Monday, about 800 census workers will fan out locally April 27 to contact those households that failed to respond by mail. By June 10, they hope to have counted every household in the county, Rivera said.

Ventura County has done well so far. None of the other 57 California counties has a rate of return within three percentage points of Ventura County.

San Mateo County is at 68%. At 67% are the counties of Contra Costa, San Diego, Santa Clara and Yolo. Santa Barbara County is at 65%, and Los Angeles County is at 64%.

Small rural counties have done poorly, with five having returns of less than 50%--Alpine, Lake, Lassen, Modoc and Plumas.