THE EAST CENTRAL FLORIDA REGIONAL PLANNING COUNCIL,
Winter Park, Fla., August 5, 1971.

Hon. WILLIAM V. CHAPPELL, JR.,
House of Representatives,
Washington, D.C.

DEAR REPRESENTATIVE CHAPPELL: Thank you for your time on the telephone last week. As per our conversation, I have prepared a very brief description of the census update procedure I mentioned. As a researcher, I would recommend that the idea be tested on a small scale at first because many wrinkles need to be ironed out. We tend to think we anticipate everything, but we sometimes don't. As you probably are well aware, the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council has been without an Executive Director for some time. Fortunately, we have now obtained the services of Mr. Jack Glatting who has been serving very ably as Development Administrator of Brevard County. I am reasonably certain that he will want to take an active part in laying the groundwork for the update procedure if it takes place in the east central Florida region.

Since the update idea entails some rather interesting intergovernmental and interagency relationships, we have not suggested very much in the way of areas of responsibility. Clearly, we would prefer to have the ECFRPC be the locus of the development and demonstration of the update procedure.

Nevertheless, we believe that paramount importance should be assigned to getting the project underway. If the procedure could be brought to a reasonable degree of efficiency by the time of a mid-decade census, certain kinds of census taking might no longer be necessary after the 1975 enumeration. We await with interest your comments and suggestions. Sincerely yours,

Enclosure.

RICHARD S. WETHERILL,

Director of Research.

PROPOSAL FOR A 30-DAY CENSUS UPDATE PROCEDURE This is a proposal to conduct in the six-county area of the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council a project to develop a prototype census update procedure that can be expanded first, to the State of Florida, second to the Southeastern Region of the United States, and finally, to the entire nation. By utilizing limited modifications of existing data collection and processing practices, this procedure could eventuate in a census update as often as every 30 days. The update would include most items in File A of Count I of the 1970 Census. This project would take advantage of the following:

1. Intergovernmental and interagency cooperation and coordination:

(a) Establishment of a census update committee with representatives from at least:

1. The Congressional Subcommittee on Census and Statistics of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service;

2. The Bureau of the Census;

3. The Department of the Post Office;

4. The Department of Housing and Urban Development;

5. The Bureau of Vital Statistics (both state and federal) ;

6. The assessors in the six-county area of the ECFRPC;

7. Building permit-issuing agencies in the region;

8. The ECFRPC (at least the Executive Director, the Research Direc

tor, and one layman);

9. The municipalities in the area.

(b) Expanded development of the patterns of interrelationships created by the update committee's efforts to promote intergovernmental and interagency cooperation.

2. Decentralization-The project would entail at least a limited decentralization of Post Office and Bureau of the Census personnel, and a considerable decentralization of the storage of census data.1

1 The reason for suggesting a decentralization of census storage is that it appears to be the most reasonable way to avoid invasion of privacy and Big Brother charges that might arise if only the Federal Government were involved. Many of the functional problems incurred by decentralization would be offset by the proposed computer network.

3. Development of: 2

(a) A modified Post Office change-of-address form, and recommendations for the Congressional actions necessary to implement its testing and use; (b) Reporting procedures by the Bureau of Vital Statistics of the State of Florida necessary to the successful input of data from that source;

(c) Uniform reporting, and procedures for collecting such reports from the assessors' offices and all building permit-issuing offices in the six-county east central Florida region, or development of a technique for machine translation of non-uniform data inputs from the assessors' and building permits offices;

(d) A computer network with regional terminals communicating with a large, central, state computer-probably at the State University;

(e) An extended ACG or DIME system to cover the entire east central Florida region (and later, the nation).

The reasons for suggesting that this update procedure occur in the east central Florida region are:

1. The advent of the Walt Disney World, the Naval Training Center, and Florida Technological has turned the Orlando area into one of the fastest growing regions in the United States, and all projections are that it will soon become the most rapidly growing SMSA in the country;

2. The eastern portion of the region (especially Brevard County) has undergone considerable economic depression as a result of cutbacks in the aerospace program;

3. The region has areas of extremely dense population and rural areas of many hundreds of square miles in which finding human habitation is difficult; 4. The six counties which comprise the region have widely divergent record-keeping procedures related to housing and land use.

The foregoing situations seem comprehensive and challenging enough to test any census updating procedure.

For instance, the out-migration from Brevard County (a phenomenon which may now have come to a standstill) and the heavy in-migration in Orange County should bring about rapid transition in the demographic characteristics of neighborhoods in those areas. For example, the 1970 Census has already indicated that in-migration of persons 65 years and over is declining as a percent of the total in-migrating population. This factor alone has great significance for public services (especially welfare), for elected officials (to ascertain the characteristics of their constituents), and so on. In addition, developing a six-county ACG or DIME system in the east central Florida region, because of its extreme variations in population density, certainly would help in solving many of the problems that would be encountered in other parts of the country. Finally, the six counties comprising our region employ such diverse record-keeping and reporting procedures as they relate to population and housing that unifying them, either by committee agreement or by machine translation (or a little of both), would be a milestone in data gathering.

Schematic drawings of the functioning of the update system are attached. A detailed proposal is available upon request, but the reader should keep in mind that the schematic drawings are so general that they cannot show the time sequence in the data merging process. The manner in which the data is merged (by time first, and location second) is highly critical to the success of the entire operation. Furthermore, the schematic shown is limited. The content of the update procedure can be expanded considerably, funding, cooperation, and coordination for the extent of the expansion being the determining factor-not time or operation limitation.

Specifically, output from the limited procedure suggested would include, in addition to location:

1. Population by race, sex, age, and all derivatives possible;

2. Housing by number of units per structure, number and types of rooms, condition of plumbing, cost/rental ranges, square feet per unit, acreage per unit, and all derivatives possible;

3. All derivatives possible through a combination of 1 and 2.

Not only would the outputs just named be of immense value to the public sector, but the contributions they could make to the general economy would be considerable.

*Note that all development procedures, as mentioned earlier, are based on operations already in use. This should lead eventually to a considerable saving in data collection and processing in terms of time, personnel, and dollars.

Cost (First year—all local except state computer)

Computer (testing purposes):

Tie to University of Florida computer center, including modems, telephone line, CPU, printer, etc--.

$36, 000

ECFRPC terminal (capable of batch mode transmission) with enough stand alone capabiilty to do machine translation and test update techniques____

24, 000 3,750

4, 250

3,000

3, 600

41, 500

116, 100

1 Not including any special printing, graphics, etc., entailed in developing special Federal Government form.

The cost for personnel supplied by other agencies is not known and, therefore, not entered as an item. A not unfounded estimate would be $45,000 for personnel, $30,000 for special Federal services, and $25,000 for paper, supplies, travel, etc,. or a total of $100,000. Federal officials, however, would be much more able to estimate their needs.

SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA PLANNING DISTRICT COMMISSION,

Re Mid-Decade Census

Mr. CHARLES H. WILSON,

Norfolk, Va., September 17, 1971.

Chairman, Subcommittee on Census and Statistics, U.S. House of Representatives, Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. WILSON: In response to your letter of July 22, 1971, the Southeastern Virginia Planning District Commission, representing the Cities of Chesapeake, Franklin, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, and the Counties of Isle of Wight, Nansemond and Southampton, approved the enclosed resolution in its meeting of August 26, 1971 supporting the need for a middecade census. We also recommend that the federal government utilize qualified local area offices, using census standards, be authorized to implement the census taking, be held responsible for the results and be reimbursed by the federal government for the effort involved. We feel this could lead to a continuing census operation which is necessary and desirable for regional areas, but should be under regional operation within certain guidelines and criteria established by the federal agency.

This concept of regional participation and in-put was presented by me before several conferences called by the Bureau of the Budget which included Census representation in our effort to establish a demonstration program under the Tidewater Optimal Planning System (TOPS) concept.

If you desire further information on this proposal we will be pleased to provide same.

Sincerely,

Enclosure.

ROBERT F. FOELLER,

Executive Director.

RESOLUTION ON MID-DECADE CENSUS, SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA

PLANNING DISTRICT COMMISSION

Whereas, the Southeastern Virginia Planning District Commission is charged under Section 15.1-1406 of the Code of Virginia with preparing and recommending a comprehensive plan to guide the orderly development of its region; and

Whereas, the Southeastern Virginia Planning District Commission has been designated the Areawide Planning Agency by the federal, state and the local governments of its participating jurisdictions and, with such designation, is recognized as the official Areawide Review Agency (ARA) and Areawide Planning Organization (APO); and

Whereas, proper planning and policy making are dependent upon accurate and timely information of the type generated by the United States Bureau of the Census; and

Whereas, the decennial census data becomes seriously outdated after five years and is therefore not a suitable basis for most planning and policy making in rapidly changing areas; and

Whereas, local and regional agencies are economically unable to develop such much needed information at their own expense; now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Southeastern Virginia Planning District Commission endorses the need for a mid-decade census by the Bureau of the Census to be undertaken in 1975 and every ten years thereafter.

STARK COUNTY REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION,

Hon. CHARLES H. WILSON,
U.S. House of Representatives,

Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Canton, Ohio, August 11, 1971.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN WILSON: In answer to your very informative letter of July 20, 1971, I wish to emphatically endorse the mid-decade census proposal. We at the Planning Commission are charged with predicting all types of social characteristics of our local populace. The Comprehensive Transportation Plan, on which Federal matching funds is predicated, requires a major updation every five years. The mid-decade census would coincide with this requirement and would provide a much more accurate picture of our transportation needs.

Housing requirements for our residents are a national as well as a local concern. Data obtained from a mid-decade census would assist us in making a housing market analysis for this area.

Current census data are necessary to conduct many studies and reports on which are based a great number of decisions in both the public and private sectors.

We are therefore urgently requesting your Committee to recommend this much needed mid-decade census.

Sincerely,

J. DALE CAWTHORNE, Director.

DELAWARE VALLEY REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION,
Philadelphia, Pa., October 22, 1971.

Hon. CHARLES H. WILSON,

U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Census and Statistics, Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN WILSON: During the month of October, 1971, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission reviewed the status of legislative and administrative decisions concerning the conduct of a mid-decade census of population and housing. DVRPC's Technical Advisory Committee on Data and Mapping, which includes representatives of the technical planning functions of the cities of Philadelphia, Chester, Camden and Trenton; four counties in Pennsylvania, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery; and four counties in New Jersey, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Mercer, unanimously agreed that the need for the mid-decade census had been thoroughly established in the 1971 hearings held by your committee. They felt that the alternatives now being investigated by the office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Bureau of the Census are not likely to produce satisfactory small area data of comparable nature and quality.

On October 20, 1971, the Board of the DVRPC which includes policy level representatives from each of the governmental jurisdictions described above, unanimously agreed to recommend to you that expeditious action be taken by the Congress to authorize the U.S. Bureau of the Census to conduct the census of population and housing on April 1, 1975.

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission has planning jurisdictions over an interstate area of 3,500 square miles which includes 353 minor civil division that have a cumulative population of more than five million persons. It is essential to the efficient, economic and effective performance of our planning mission that mid-decade census data be made available to us.

Sincerely,

PAUL R. ANAPOL, Chairman.