Preparations are underway to get everyone in Forest County counted in the 2020 census.
“One thing I tell people is, if you don’t want anyone knocking on your door or coming onto your property, fill out the census,” said Eric Cepek, chairman of the Forest County Census Committee.
Three mailings will go out asking people to fill out the census, Cepek said. Once someone fills out the census, he or she is automatically taken off the list and won’t receive more mailings or get a knock on the door, Cepek said.
Filling out the census online should take five minutes or less, he said. Cepek added that no outages are expected for people using the website.
Other options for responding include filling out the census over the phone or requesting a paper census sheet to fill out and mail in, Dwayne Lehman, a census organizer with the U.S. Census Bureau, said.
There is no census app, Cepek said.
Cepek, who is also the Veterans Affairs director in Forest County, said one of his goals is to see to it that all the veterans in the county are represented in the census.
Librarians at Tionesta and Marienville said they will assist veterans and anyone else who needs help filling out the census, Cepek said.
He added that he is also working with Forest Area School District and that West Forest school personnel will notify students’ parents about the census.
Camp owners aren’t considered residents in Forest County and aren’t counted in the county’s census, Cepek said. He added that the county also has residents who head South during census time, adding another wrinkle to the task of counting people accurately.
A wave of census takers will go into nursing homes and the state prison near Marienville to ensure everyone in those places is counted, Cepek said.
Meanwhile, census takers in Forest County are still being sought, Cepek said.
The census takers are “door knockers” who go to residences where people haven’t filled out the census by Census Day on April 1.
In the 2010 census, Forest County lost its distinction as the least populated county in Pennsylvania as the county showed a population spike from 4,946 in 2000 to 7,716 in 2010.
In 2010, 2,282 people counted in the census were inmates at the Marienville prison, which was built in 2004. But even without the prison population, the county grew in population by almost 500 people from 2000 to 2010.
Forest County’s population in the 1980 census was 5,072. That was the first time the county’s population topped 5,000 since the 1940 census when the number was 5,791.
The biggest population ever recorded in Forest County was in the 1900 census when the count was 11,039 residents.