City of Santa Maria is hopeful 2020 census brings good news for community

SANTA MARIA, Calif. – It’s been over a month since the census came to an end, and the City of Santa Maria has high hopes that it will bring good news for the community.

At this time the total response rate is at 67% with the city limits, which hasn't changed since October 15.

The city says some areas had better response rates as high as 78 percent, where others like the northwest part of town were as low as 46 percent.

The census is done every ten years to determine how to allocate state and federal funding to the community.

It even helps businesses, especially now as COVID-19 is on a rise.

“Businesses are gonna be looking carefully at what those numbers mean because they rely on them to make long term decisions on where they are going to open stores and where they are going to close them,” said Santa Maria Public Information Manager Mark van de Kamp. “What products they are going to sell, they are going through so much as they are trying to stay open.”

The City says numbers will not be finalized until spring of next year.