Main Street Matters By Michelle Owens - Executive Director, Tybee Island Development Authority/Main Street
Your ‘Two Cents’ Can Make Tybee Count
28 TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | OCT 2020
That’s the lowest participation of any community in Chatham
County. By comparison, our neighbors in Pooler had the highest
participation, with 66 percent completing their census forms. What
gives Tybee?
Census data determines the number of seats each state gets in the
U.S. House of Representatives. It’s also used to allocate hundreds of
billions of dollars in federal money to local communities – funds that
can be used for education, senior services, public safety, emergency
operations and healthcare, among so many other necessities for a
decent quality of life. Our first responders need you to speak up. Our
elderly neighbors need you to speak up. The city’s leaders need you
to speak up. Your loved ones need you to speak up.
You don’t have much time left to complete the Census. Sooner
is better than later, since we don’t know when it will really end. It
started in January of 2020 and was slated to end October 31, 2020.
But as I write this appeal to you, there is talk of ending this decennial
count a month early.
If you raised your voice as a citizen and completed the census
already, many blessings to you. Namaste.
If you haven’t completed it and there’s still time for you to do so,
make haste to at www.my2020census.gov and do your civic duty by
checking those boxes. It’s easy and the pay-off is big.
If the census does indeed end earlier than originally planned,
and you’ve missed this decade’s opportunity to be counted on behalf
of yourself, your loved ones and your community, then you’ve also
forfeited the right to complain for the next 10 years.
When we still had littles in the house, they always had a way of
making themselves heard – from a midnight wail as infants to the
tweenaged “Moooommm” shouted down the stairs.
They are not unique. We all come into this world with the ability to
speak up and be heard. And we use that ability consistently from the day
we inhale our way into the world, until the day we exhale our way out.
With introductory phrases like “if you want my two cents…” or “in
my humble opinion…” we share everything we think other people should
know. We do it from the barstool of our favorite hangouts. We do it on
Facebook and other social media. Some even pay for billboards and sky
writing to tell us who they love or what to buy.
So for the life of me, I can’t figure out why, at a time when our ability to
speak up can bring riches to our tiny town, there has been the equivalent
of a deafening silence from Tybee residents. Why, in a nation where we
are fortunate to have freedom of speech and where people vehemently
defend their First Amendment rights, we suddenly have nothing to say?
Our mayor has begged us to speak up. We’ve put up banners and
messages on the city website imploring you to let your voices be heard
and still…crickets.
I am of course talking about the 2020 Census – that opportunity
every 10 years to speak up and say to the Feds, “I’m here. We matter.
Send Money.”
At the time of this writing, Tybee ranked dead last in local Census
participation. How can an island of extroverts and conversationalists
suddenly be shy? There’s just under 3,000 of us here on this island
(according to the 2010 Census) and yet only about 800 of us (26.9 %)
have completed the 2020 Census eight months after its launch.
/www.my2020census.gov