Costly Census

It’s like they spend money just because they can.  Wait, it’s not “like” that.  That’s what it is. 

This week West Benders received a notification letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The letter read: “About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. When you receive your form, please fill it out and mail it promptly. Your response is important.”

   The letter is signed by Robert M. Groves, director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

   U.S. Census Bureau paid for the pre-sorted, firstclass mail postage and fees. The bulk-mailing supervisor at the West Bend Post Office said the cost was about 35 cents per letter. Regular postage is 44 cents.

   Don Zimmer is the local census office manager in Oshkosh. He said the Census Bureau mailed 123 million letters to households nationwide. At 35 cents postage, that’s about $43 million. The population in West Bend is 30,400.

   “We used global positioning systems to get local addresses and we sent out the form letter,” said Zimmer. “So as many residence we could identify that were occupied, those were the letters that went to people. Again they weren’t addressed to people but to housing units.”

   State Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend said this one more example of wasteful spending.

   “This just shows, one more time, how completely oblivious too many government officials are to spending other people’s money,” he said. “I would guess the advance letter will result in zero more people filling out their form.”