While a huge national

effort is underway to take a headcount of all Americans,

municipalities and other groups are helping out on the

local level.

The U.S. Postal Service is

set to deliver almost 100 million Census 2000

questionnaires to households across the country this

week, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's official web

site. Millions more already have been delivered by Census

Bureau workers.

But as those folks make

their rounds, and when the powers that be in Washington

tally up the scores later this year, they'll be doing so

thanks in part to city employees and records in places

like Peachtree City.

City planner David Rast has

been working for several months to help the Census Bureau

do its job here more efficiently.

The city received maps from

the Census Bureau several months ago, along with lists of

addresses, so that city staff could check them out and

make corrections. There were many corrections to make,

Rast said.

He has since gone through

several versions of maps and address lists, making

revisions and getting rid of duplicates. As anyone who is

familiar with the growth this area has seen in the past

decade can imagine, a lot has changed.

In addition to the more

common residential units, counters must consider such

special listings as dormitories and nursing homes when

gathering their data. A county in Virginia was named the

fastest-growing in the nation for the past year, largely

due to the fact that it is now home to two new prisons.

Nothing like that has been

built in Peachtree City lately, but Southland Nursing

Home and the Catholic Rectory have to be included, Rast

said.

"We're trying to

provide the most accurate address information and

up-to-date maps," he said. "This information

will help census workers find various streets and other

places."

Rast also is on the Fayette

County Complete Count Committee, which includes

representatives from all of the municipalities in the

county, along with Board of Education, Chamber of

Commerce and other business and civic leaders. The

committee meets about once a month, and its primary goal

is to promote the census.

Special stickers have been

circulated touting April 1 as Census Day. They will be

seen on nearly all county vehicles, Rast said.

Fayette County led Georgia

in the percentage of census returns in 1990, and the

committee wants to maintain that.

There are a couple of

factors that should make the census process somewhat

easier this time around than in 1990. Everything is much

more computerized now, which allows projects like Rast's

recent map updating to be done much more quickly than

before.

Also, the Census Bureau is

mounting a much more aggressive publicity campaign this

time. Dozens of television commercials in prime time and

other forms of mass media are being used like never

before.

Although the only official

use mandated by the U.S. Constitution for the census is

to determine how many congressional seats each state

gets, political leaders in every spectrum are emphasizing

how census totals directly relate to how much federal

money each city and state will get in the next 10 years.

The Census Bureau's final

estimates before Census Day were released last week. For

the year ending July 1, 1999, Fayette County grew 4.1

percent to a total estimated population of 92,378.