In this entry, Benson Hill resident Kari Kopnick ponders the Renton Census that is required to get state assistance with annexation funding. Here is her journal entry:
_________________________________________________________

This is the information age, I know it. I am well past my 20s but I still have a facebook and a myspace. I play scrabble online with friends across the country, and keep in touch with my mom by email.

But I’m still a little skittish about giving out information about my family. Part of the Benson Hill neighborhood annexation to Renton involves a census. I got a letter a couple of weeks ago from the city advising us that a “census enumerator” will be coming to the door, wearing an official City of Renton badge with their name and picture on it. They have been charged to ask me my name, and the name of everyone who lives in my household. It’s for money, so the city can get funds allocated based on population increase. I get it. But still, I was a little uneasy when I heard about this.

OK, so what’s the big deal? I have a pretty public life. I work for a church and my contact information is all over the church website. I have a facebook with lots of information; even my political leanings. I know that technically that information is private, but I really I think if someone wanted it, they could get it.

Maybe that’s it. I wonder if the census information will really be destroyed after the verification process. I momentarily remember that during World War 2 when people of Japanese decent were held in concentration camps, one way that officials located the people was with US census information. And we are a mixed race family. My husband is a Korean American, I’m white, and our kids are like Barak Obama, Tiger Woods and Keanu Reeve—mixed race or what some mixed race Asian folks call hapa.

But this form doesn’t ask for race.

This census form (available online at rentonwa.gov) only asks for our names and a kind of survey of how much time we spend at our home address. “Do any of those listed above attend school and not live at the above address during the school year?” “Do any of those listed above sleep elsewhere more than three nights per week?” things like that.

Maybe my issue is with listing my kids. Maybe naming the people over 18 who live here is not a big deal, but writing down the names of the kids is unsettling.

But my kids’ names are on forms we send to the IRS and they are registered for school. It’s not like they’re flying under the radar right now.

So, I thought I should be a good citizen and do what the letter I got says to do if I have questions or concerns and call the person they list to call. I easily reached Glenn MacGilva, the person listed. He even answered on the first ring. And he was really friendly. Glenn is from the firm called Census Services that Renton hired to do the census of our area. He seemed maybe to be expecting that I was about to bite his head off, but I wasn’t. I really just wanted to know why the city needed our names. And I wanted to know what was going to happen once I gave our names over to his “enumerator”, the person that knocks on my door.

He told me that the state wants names so that they can be assured that the city is not just making up names to pad the numbers being annexed, which of course equals more money, and also to bar against inadvertent duplicates. When I asked why they can’t just do an average, you know say this many households usually have this many people so here’s the number. He told me that that would average out over a really big number of households, but given that we’re really dealing with neighborhoods, it can be very different; like a neighborhood with lots of empty nesters probably has a different average household number than a neighborhood with lots of families with young kids. Mr. MacGilva also told me that the state actually goes and does random checks with a name match, and that’s why it can’t really just be a number. That’s why they want a name.

OK. That I’ll buy. I can see the point there.

Mr. MacGilva told me if I had concerns about security of the confidentiality of my family’s names once they left my front door I should call a woman named Theresa Lowe from the State Office of Financial Management. So I did.

Ms. Lowe was also lovely to talk with, and even remembered in 1967 being at the Federal Office building preparing for the 1970 survey and hearing from people who had been profiled during World War 2 based on the US Census. Now that’s living history. She reassured me that with these annexation surveys the names are physically cut from the forms and shredded when they reach her office. And she also affirmed that there is no law that compels us to answer this census. It is important to get the best response to the census possible, so the state can provide the right level of funding. But it’s still voluntary.

So now, I don’t know!

Maybe I should just go live in a yurt on an island in the ocean where no one cares who lives there.

Yeah, I know. There would probably be a motor powered canoe that would putter up and someone would climb out, and they’d have a name badge and a clip board. And they’d want to know who lived in my yurt and how many nights a week we all slept there.

Yep, it’s the information age.

Kari Kopnick