Town staff were expecting to complete the municipal census on June 17, with only 52 residences yet to be counted as of that day.
Town staff were expecting to complete the municipal census on June 17, with only 52 residences yet to be counted as of that day.
A couple of weeks ago, Norm McInnis, the town’s chief administrative officer, said the administrative team were eager to hear from the people that had not yet filled out the survey, which was available online.
"(The census administrative team is) not happy with the unaccounted-for number, so amongst themselves they are going to go out and try and hit the rest of those houses," he said.
"We are in the final throes of this thing and people’s cooperation would sure be appreciated," McInnis said.
Census-takers were driving around town and knocking on doors to secure the information. McInnis said the census-takers will be able to produce town identification upon request.
The survey asks three short questions and takes only a few minutes to complete, McInnis said, adding the town wants to continue to do a census on an ongoing basis.
In the future, administrators would like to add more detailed questions to the survey in order to capture information that was formerly available through the long form census that was abolished by the federal government in 2010.
"That information (was) critical for us from a planning perspective. And the (Statistics Canada) stuff, even when it is available, it’s usually a couple years old by the time it’s published and not real relevant. So we just want to have better, more timely information," McInnis said.
Town staff wants council to expand the municipal census in the future for planning purposes.
The town also relies on some of the information that community groups such as the Olds Sustainability Committee and the Olds Institute For Community and Regional Development gather to inform administrators about some of the questions that might form part of future surveys. The information from future surveys could then be used by those community groups to serve the needs of residents.
The Town of Olds is projecting it will tally just over 8,500 residents in the community by the time the municipal census wraps up.
The town began counting residents at the beginning of May and had budgeted $17,000 for the census.
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