Rochester Hills Residents Got Counted, and It Will Pay

In 2000, Rochester Hills finished among the bottom five in Oakland County in the percentage of residents who returned their U.S. Census Bureau forms.

That wouldn't happen again, city officials said at the time.

Before the 2010 census, they went to work, forming a Complete Count team and working to raise awareness of the importance of filling out the census form.

And so it was that in 2010, Rochester Hills finished first in Oakland County and second in Michigan in census response rates.

Overall, the city tied for fifth in the nation in the percentage of residents who returned their census forms, which attracted the attention of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Mayor Bryan Barnett spent the weekend in Baltimore at the group's annual meeting, where he was invited to outline his successful census strategy for other city leaders at the conference in Baltimore.

His strategy, as he explains it, was this.

The city created an outreach program that used Facebook and Twitter, local churches and a door hanger campaign to raise awareness of the importance of people filling out their census forms.

"Approximately $8,000 was spent in order to spread the message throughout the city," said Barnett. "Our focused strategy worked, and our return on that simple investment will be more than a hundredfold.”

According to the U.S. Census, the purpose of the nationwide counting is to determine how to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funding for roads, bridges, hospitals, schools and emergency services.

Because of its census response rate, city officials estimate Rochester Hills will see an annual increase of about $140,000 to $150,000 in constitutionally protected state-shared revenue. That's $1.5 million in federal funding over the next 10 years.