McKenna Harford / mharford@skyhinews.com
Early instances of fraud have hindered educational and outreach efforts as Grand County prepares for the 2020 Census.
Senior housing, including Cliffview Assisted Living in Kremmling, has been targeted by impersonators acting as census takers asking for donations, information about banking accounts and other personal questions that an actual census worker would never ask, said Alexis Kimborough, communications coordinator for the county and chair of the census Complete Count Committee.
“There have been a lot of instances of people impersonating census takers,” she said. “Please do not give out your personal information.”
A census worker never asks for a social security number, bank account information, passwords or donations.
Kimborough added that answers to the census are confidential for 72 years and cannot legally be shared with any government agency.
Because the census cannot be delivered to a PO Box, census employees will hand-deliver the census to the majority of residences in Grand County.
Census takers will begin making the rounds starting with individual homeowners in the county on March 15 and then for group quarters, such as senior housing, employee housing and others that share a building address, on April 1.
“Silvercreek Inn is considered group quarters, everybody under one roof with the same address,” Kimborough said.
All census takers can be verified via an official identification badge or by calling the Denver regional office at 800-852-6159.
Aside from census related scams, Kimborough said the count will be challenging for Grand County because of the high number of second-homeowners and seasonal employees, as well as identifying homeless populations.
The U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t define how long an individual has to live somewhere before the location becomes their primary residence, so Kimborough is encouraging seasonal employees and second-home owners to count their residence in Grand.
“(Seasonal workers) are a huge part of our population for the majority of the year, so we need to make sure we have the funding to account for those workers, and then also second-home owners,” she said.
It’s important for as many people that can to count their residency in Grand so the county receives proportionate funding from the federal government, Kimborough explained.
For each person that isn’t counted on the census, the county loses $15,000 of federal funding on average until the next census count, according to Kimborough.
“Yes, this is done by the U.S. government, but it’s for us, it’s for our county,” she said.
She will be presenting census information and answering questions at each town during town hall meetings beginning in March, as well as hosting community events in the coming months.