Commentary by John Rogers
It has been an honor working for the city of Westfield for the past seven years. In my role as the Director of Enterprise Development, some of my responsiblities include contracts, financial models and streamlining processes that provide the most value add to our taxpayers.
I’m always searching for new ways to increase the net value of our city, and one process that will add the most value in a short amount of time is a special census.
The special census is an upfront cost to our community of $625,000. However, that is a one-time expense, and the value add is more than $1 million in revenue re-allocation before the 2020 census. The city is growing, but the dollars that Westfield has allocated from the state is based on our 2010 population. With the new census numbers, Westfield’s corrected distribution will be approximately $330,000 higher each year. That money can be used for things like infrastructure improvements, roundabouts and filling pot holes. Our biggest obstacle is hiring enough temporary employees to complete the work in a timely fashion. We need you.
We need people to go door-to-door and collect the data, and we need people to open the door and answer the census questions. A special census is a huge endeavor, and it is in a tight time frame because the sooner we get it done, the sooner Westfield can capture the revenue, but none of it can be done without you.
If you’re interested in working for the special census please go to westfield.in.gov/employment. There, you can find a list of job descriptions and how much they pay.
Please remember census workers will be going door\-to-door starting at the end of October. Please take the time to provide the correct information to the census workers because that money is going back into the community we all love.
We are accepting applications until Oct. 20.