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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesCENSUS 2000 BEGINS: THE FORM IS IN THE MAIL

CENSUS 2000 BEGINS: THE FORM IS IN THE MAIL

Census 2000 officially began in the Virgin Islands on Thursday with the dedication of the St. Thomas headquarters at Nisky Center and the arrival of official census forms in most people's mail.
The task at hand now is to count every person and map every structure in the Virgin Islands.
"Everyone goes to Washington with their hand out," UVI President Orville Kean said at the opening ceremony. "That's what the federal government expects. The important thing is to know how much of the pie is your share when you go asking. The Census gives us that information."
Kean said his association with the Census dates from when he was a planning and research assistant in the former V.I. Commerce Department. Back then, he and Frank Mills, a Census volunteer, concluded that the then-College of the Virgin Islands was the best entity to carry out the Census in the territory. UVI's Eastern Caribbean Center, where Mills is now the director, is under contract to do the work today.
Federal officials present included Fay Nash of the U.S. Census Decennial Management Bureau in Washington and Al Giglitto, on-site census adviser for the Virgin Islands.
This year, for the first time, Nash said, paid advertising is being used nationwide to encourage people to participate in the census count. Locally, a poster featuring a painting by St. Croix artist Leo Carty is being used to promote census participation.
Mills said Census employees are sworn to secrecy concerning the information they collect, and they risk fine and/or imprisonment for disclosing any of it.
Information about individuals is not passed on to other government agencies, he said. What matters is collective information — how many seniors there are in the territory, how many school-age children, how residents earn their living, what services are needed from government, what new trends are emerging, and whether there has been growth or a decline in the population.

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