To the Editor:

On Oct. 2, 2020, the United States Census Bureau issued an advisory to its census workers throughout the United States:

“As a result of court orders, the October 5, 2020 target date is not operative, and data collection operations will continue through October 31, 2020. Employees should continue to work diligently and enumerate as many people as possible. Contact your supervisor with any questions.”

The court-ordered extension gives those households who have not responded on their own three more weeks to do so by mail, internet, or by phone.

The timeline for the completion of all field work has been changed several times, which has been disruptive to say the least, but this advisory makes it clear that you can still self-respond to complete your census form up until Oct. 31.

This is good news for residents who have not self-responded and still wish to do so. Enumerators have been visiting the households who have not responded and may continue to do so through to the end of the month.

If you cannot complete the form on your own or by internet, please work with the enumerator to complete the form. It will surely help our community if we get a complete count.

The nine-question form takes 10 minutes to fill out. If you haven’t completed the census form, please do it today. You can respond to the census by phone in 13 different languages. Visit my2020census.gov or call 844-330-2020 to get counted — and share this with a friend!

Thus far, Altamont households’ self-response rate of 76.6 percent is definitely noteworthy compared to other municipalities in Albany County and statewide. Altamont’s self-response rate places it ahead of 93 percent of all municipalities in New York State, ranking the village 114 out of 1,597 municipalities as of Oct. 5, 2020. This is outstanding compared to Altamont’s self-response rate in 2010, where only 43.6 percent of its residents self-responded.

Altamont community members should congratulate themselves on this result — the most improved of all the municipalities in Albany County!

The table included here compares the current self-response rates with 2010 results for all municipalities in the county as of Oct. 5, 2020. Nearly half of all the county municipalities met or exceeded their self-response rates in 2010, but an almost equal number of municipalities did not match their 2010 self-response rate. 

We are hopeful that the enumerators who will now be allowed to canvas one more month will improve the final counts for these places in Albany County that did not self-respond as well this year.

Kerry Dineen

Mayor

Altamont

Joe Burke

Director

Altamont Free Library

James Gaughan

Mayor 2005-17

Altamont