El Paso Behind on the Census, Could Cost City Billions

It feels like we've been talking about this forever. But apparently we haven't been talking about it enough because people still aren't completing their 2020 Census in El Paso. This could end up costing us billions of dollars.

If you still haven't filled out your 2020 Census, make sure to do it now. Seriously, it takes maybe 5 minutes. And it can be done online. Just how far behind are we? We're being told as may as 150,00 people still haven't completed their 2020 Census. County Commissioner David Stout talked about the lack of completed forms:

Over 2 billion dollars, that's what our community would miss out on. And that means for road, transportation infrastructure, for schools, for our hospitals. And if we don't get that money from the federal government, but we still need to spend that money, where do you think that's gonna come from? It's gonna come from local taxpayers.

The census has a lot to do with the money we get here in El Paso. A LOT. Schools are heavily dependent on how the census comes out, so if people aren't filling it out, we are going to have major issues with funding the schools. Jacob Meils, a census data analysis coordinator sums it up like this:

One of the easiest ways you can increase your child's education is by increasing funding. And one of the easiest ways to increase funding is by filling out your census. And census dollars help our schools.

The census also dictates how many seats we'll get in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with various federal funding programs. If you haven't filled out the 2020 Census yet, you have about a month to do so as they are due September 30th.