Knox officials are disappointed by the rate of participation in this year’s census so far. Mayor Dennis Estok discussed the response rate with the city council last week.
“I don’t know if Starke County’s not taking it seriously, Knox is not taking it seriously,” Estok said. “Starke County right now is at 59 percent, and we are ranked 79 out of 92 counties. And that is not good.”
But Knox is actually faring better than most communities in the area. As of Monday, Winamac’s self-response rate was 61.9 percent, while Hamlet’s was 57.8. The rest of the towns in Pulaski County had a much lower response, at 45.7 percent in Medaryville, 40.8 percent in Monterey, and just 34.3 percent in Francesville. Pulaski County as a whole had a response rate of 57 percent.
North Judson was the only local community to get as much of a response as Knox did. Both communities’ rates had reached of 63.6 percent by Monday.
Mayor Estok felt the city and the county have not done a good job in responding to the census. “The city, I think, we could do a lot better and the county on the whole needs to do a lot better because there’s too much at stake at the numbers,” Estok said. “So the thing is, if you know anybody, your family, your friends, they’ve got to do them. They’ve got to get going.”
The results of the census help determine how federal funding is distributed and how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives, among other things.
