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.

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