Hyde County has been advised that its 2020 Census return rate is currently ranked 94th out of 100 North Carolina counties.
This puts the county at risk for an undercount which could negatively impact future funding and resources for the next decade.
If you have not responded to the 2020 Census, please visit https://2020census.gov/en/ways-to-respond.html and take a few minutes to complete the census.
An accurate census count is vital to get funding for our schools, social programs, highway funding, disaster recovery, and number of other important programs. It also makes sure we have accurate representation in government.
Getting an accurate count is extremely important.
If you have already filled yours out, check with your friends and neighbors and remind them as well. It only takes a few minutes.
Why is this not surprising? For months after Hurricane Dorian. we were urged to come out of our shock, and give our vital information (which many of us lost in the flood) to all sorts of agencies—political, religious, independent affiliations all offering to help us. Many folks were scammed by the latter two. Then the county opens us in the middle of a pandemic with less than a week to prepare, when shopkeepers couldn’t even find hand sanitizer, and folks living in temporary homes had to find new, more crowded shelter so the tourists could come in to the non-residential property owner’s homes they were gratefully occupying, and now, the county is urging us to fill out paper work left on our abandoned doorsteps, while islanders work long hours in the heat and face abuse in the current political atmosphere, and can’t even begin to think of rebuild yet…it’s as if the county is saying, “we know you haven’t healed yet, but we need your economy and the extra money we get based on your existence.” Whew! That’s a hard pill to swallow.
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