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Report regarding a resolution authorizing the acceptance of $22,500 in grant funding from the County of San Mateo to support the City of South San Francisco's Census 2020 outreach and canvassing in hard-to-reach neighborhoods and approving Budget Amendment 21.009. (Kathy Bland?n Escobar, Census 2020 Program Manager)
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RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
It is recommended that the City Council adopt a resolution authorizing the acceptance of $22,500 in grant funding from the County of San Mateo to support the City of South San Francisco's Census 2020 outreach and canvassing to ensure a fair, accurate, and complete count of the South San Francisco population and approving Budget Amendment 21.009.
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BACKGROUND/DISCUSSION
The deadline to fill out the U.S. Census questionnaire has been moved up by four weeks to September 30, 2020. Due to COVID-19, on April 13, 2020, The Census Bureau delayed its field operations until July 31, 2020 and extended the self-response deadline to October 31. This would have given the Census Bureau until April 30, 2021 to process the data for congressional reapportionment. However, on August 3, 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau announced the self-response deadline has been shortened to September 30, 2020, maintaining the Bureau's statutory deadline of December 31, 2020 for congressional apportionment and maintaining the March 31, 2021 deadline for redistricting of legislative and congressional seats. This recent scaling back of the submittal deadline greatly interferes with the goal of getting a fair and accurate census count. In addition, the Census Bureau has not been able to hire, train and deploy canvassers and enumerators needed to reach out to and assist Hard to Reach/Least Likely to Respond residents. In response, San Mateo County is providing a $22,500 grant to enable canvassing to community members who have not yet submitted a census questionnaire, with a special focus on the low response census tracts of 6022 and 6023.
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