Myers promotes third census

For the third census in a row, Butler County Emergency Management Director Robbie Myers is stepping up to help count efforts in Missouri.

He started with the census when he was a commissioner in 2000 when a representative with the census asked for help connecting them with somebody to recruit census takers.

The first person they thought of, he said, had previously worked in the prosecuting attorney’s office.

Myers

“They would not hire anybody with any kind of law enforcement (background),” Myers said. “They didn’t want anybody to misinterpret what the census was.”

Myers said the commission’s second suggestion, Joe Knodell, was a home run. Knodell was a former superintendent at Twin Rivers R-X and East Carter R-II, and served on the Three Rivers College board of trustees.

“He was very familiar with our community and our region,” Myers said. “He did a great job for them. The census 20 years ago was more about material and getting materials to different places throughout the region.”

When the next census started approaching in 2008, Myers was appointed by Gov. Matt Blunt to the Missouri Complete Count committee. The committee was responsible for work around the state raising awareness of the 2010 census and promoting an accurate count.

In the executive order creating the committee, Blunt cited the concerns over losing a seat in the House of Representatives and the vitality of federal funds for Missourians as reasons behind creating it.

At the time, Myers was a commissioner and vice president of TRC.

“We began meeting, working on statewide plans to increase participation,” he said. “We were making different headway and things were going well. Then there was a change in administration.”

In 2009, Blunt was succeeded by Gov. Jay Nixon who rescinded the executive order and dissolved those appointees. Myers said he was fortunate enough to be reappointed by Nixon.

“But the change in leadership on the committee and the stopping lack of momentum of how things were going probably led us to be less successful than we would have liked to have been,” Myers said.

The 2010 census resulted in a nearly 400,000 population increase for Missouri, but the state still lost a congressional seat. That also caused the state to lose a vote in the electoral college.

“I don’t know if we could have increased participation enough to keep that from happening,” Myers said. “It was just that change made us feel like we could have done better.”

One of the ways the committee tried to campaign was to bring in Count Van Count from Sesame Street to the state.

“That was always a fun aspect of it,” he said. “We just tried to do things that hit all age groups and make it more lighthearted and fun at times. It wasn’t all about the more mundane aspects of finances and grants and whatnot. That was a great way to get families and kids involved.”

With the 2020 census day less than two months away, Myers is serving as the chair of the Butler County Complete Count committee after he was asked by the commission.

“I’m always glad to work with the commissioners with whatever projects they have that can better our community,” he said. “It’s something that’s in Section II Article I of the Constitution that we all learned back in grade school. It’s something that needs to be done and it’s used for so many purposes, not just on the governmental level, but businesses look at that when making business decisions.”

This year, the committee’s theme is about numbers and it is partnering with different organizations to work on getting word out to different communities.

Myers said part of the struggle with encouraging participation is that people are busy in their day-to-day lives and that people in our region have “a healthy distrust of government at time.”

“Our challenge to that is that if you want to make sure they don’t come knocking on your door looking for you, go ahead and participate on census day,” Myers said. “The government does spend a lot of money trying to reach people that they don’t think are counted ... the government spends a considerable amount after the fact trying to clean up what’s not done. We want to help avoid that but also make our count as accurate as possible.”

Large portions of Butler, Dunklin and Wayne counties as well as all of Ripley County are considered hard to count populations. Myers said hard to count communities are frequently the ones that need the resources such as FEMA grant funding the most.

“We live in a world where there’s a lot of data available, but this is accepted as the gold standard and the official (data),” Myers said. “It’s important that we can get our people here in Butler County and the region to participate to try to make sure we’re getting our fair share of resources.”

Mailers will start going out in March, but the census can also be filled out over the phone or online. The actual census day of April 1 is considered a snapshot of the country that will impact things for the next decade.

Federal and state funding requests look at census data and Myers said in the instance of a natural disaster agencies can look at data down to the block to determine funding.

“Taking those few minutes on April 1 is a community service project an individual can do,” Myers said. “Besides their civic duty, it’s a public service that they’re providing to their neighbors and future neighbors.”