The start of the 2020 Census Recruitment Campaign is in full gear and will provide people in Minnesota seasonal employment. The Census Bureau and local Complete Count Committees are offering temporary government positions beginning in spring of next year.

Complete Count Committees are formed by state and local governments, and leaders are used to educate and engage their communities to assure them this process is safe, easy and important. The Census is important for a number of reasons, and a big one is that the number of Congressional districts that can be had in Minnesota is determined by how many citizens are counted for.

Kay Mack, Beltrami County Administrator, states, “Another big important thing is that a lot of funding comes based on the number of people that we have in our state, in our county, in a community, and then it becomes even important even on a really small local level in that representative government is really often broken out into districts, so in the city of Bemidji, for instance, there are city wards that are determined by certain geographic boundaries based on how many people live in those wards.”

A census is conducted every 10 years, and the city of Bemidji as well as Beltrami County wants to ensure that everyone is accurately counted.

By — Destiny Wiggins