The U.S. Census Bureau spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on promotional items used to persuade more people to mail back their census forms, and then a worker dropped off thousands of the items, unused, at a local high school.
The leftover items, such as backpacks, cloth grocery bags, hats, pins, magnets and business card holders, were dropped off at Lakewood High School last month.
“We probably had . . . over 1,000 (bags) dropped off,” Lakewood High School principal Ron Castagna told 9News.
He estimates more than 1,000 posters printed in different languages also were dropped off at the school.
An unknown census worker walked into the school in mid-April and asked the principal whether she could leave the items. She did not ask the school to distribute them.
Among the many boxes of posters the census worker left at the school were more than 300 promotional posters printed in Farsi. Farsi is a language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.
U.S. Census Bureau numbers from 2000 show that 360 people spoke Farsi in all of Jefferson County at that time.
Castagna said he hopes to let students use the backs of the posters in art classes.
“How much money was spent on items like this that could have been spent someplace else?” Castagna asked.
U.S. Census Bureau spokeswoman Lauren Shaw said that nationally, local offices used an average of 98.7 percent of the promotional items ordered, leaving 1.3 percent of all materials as leftover items.
Shaw also said she believed the materials dropped off at Lakewood High School represent unused materials for 10 states that are part of the Denver region, not just one county or one state. The census spent almost $5 million on promotional efforts in the 10-state Denver region.
Denver region census spokesman Doug Wayland said the spending was worth it.
“Visual items raise awareness about the census,” Wayland said.
