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Colorado Department of Transportation and contractor Oldcastle SW Group Inc. have completed the project to repair and make safety improvements on Colorado Highway 145 and U.S. Highway 550 in Dolores, Montezuma and Ouray counties.

The project, completed ahead of schedule and under budget, has preserved the structural integrity of the highways with the repairs and reconstruction of retaining systems at the roadways shoulder edges. The work zones and work items included:

Colorado Highway 145, mile point 24.5, about 12 miles north of Dolores in Montezuma County. Work involved a deep patch repair of the roadway and installation of a new rock buttress that provides slope stability underneath the roadway.Guardrail replacement on Colorado Highway 145 about 3 miles north of Rico in Dolores County. Work involved removing the existing retaining wall material below the edge of the roadway, installing micropiling and concrete pile caps with new backfill material to secure the slope, and followup highway surface repair.Guardrail replacement on U.S. Highway 550, MP 90, 2 miles south of Ouray in Ouray County. Work involved retaining wall removal and replacement of two failing roadway sections with a crib wall system; follow-up highway surface repair and installation of new inlet and drainage culvert.For more information, visit http://www.codot.gov/projects/co145-us550-patchwallrepair.

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Safety and drainage improvements on Colorado 145 completed early - The Journal

Land hurdles end, project resumesThe underpass project at the busy Kundalahalli junction, which is under construction currently, is expected to be ready by February next year. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has come up with a four-month action plan to complete the work which was halted due to land acquisition hurdles, including the acquisition of around 24 properties at a cost of Rs 42.51 crore.

BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad on Thursday inspected the work along with zonal engineers. He promised to take custody of around 33,654 square feet of land, required for building service roads on both sides of the underpass, in a weeks time. The junction will have a 10-metre wide service road. The work was taken up in February last year but the project suffered delays due to confusion over acquiring properties two or three times the guidance value.

The civic body conducted rate negotiation meeting with the land owners on January 3, 2020. The owners apparently did not agree to the offer of compensation of 1.63 times of the guidance value. A second meeting with owners was held on February 24. Both the parties agreed for two times the guidance value. This translates to Rs 42.51 crore for acquiring 33,654 square feet of land.

The service roads will be widened after the land acquisition is completed. The work requires about a weeks time

N Manjunath Prasad, BBMP Commissioner

Between October 15 and February 15, the main carriageway of Old Airport Road at the junction will be closed. Motorists, however, will have wide service road for commuting towards Marathalli or Whitefield. While the busy junction will soon go signal-free, Old Airport Road is unlikely to be eased any time soon as there are several intersections that clog the busy road.

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Kundalahalli underpass is expected to be ready by February - Bangalore Mirror

The Pontoon Beach Police Chief Chris Modrusic and his officers, with some Illinois State Police assistance, apprehended and rescued three individuals after a stolen car chase at the Chain of Rocks Bridge area on Tuesday.

The driver of the vehicle earlier crashed into another vehicle at Gateway and Illinois Route 111 and left the scene of the accident with their hood up. The car fled the scene and Pontoon Beach was contacted to stage and await the vehicle. Once the vehicle was close to the Chain of Rocks Bridge, it caught fire in front and eventually stopped on the bridge. The three involved jumped out of the vehicle and attempted to flee from officers, and the two males appeared to scale a 30-foot retaining wall and were both injured. A woman also was injured after attempting to flee the vehicle.

One person was airlifted from the scene and the other two were transported to an area hospital for emergency care.

Modrusic said his department will prepare charges for the Madison County State's Attorney's Office from Tuesday's chase and series of events. He said a 45-caliber-gun holster was found, along with a bulletproof vest and narcotics. The handgun had not yet been located, Modrusic said. He wondered if the weapon had been tossed into the river.

The police chief praised the work of his department and law enforcement in handling this particular case.

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Stolen Car Chase Ends At Chain Of Rocks Bridge: Pontoon Beach Police Apprehend, Rescue Three Individuals - RiverBender.com

HERE is a round-up of the most important planning applications put forward in the Stroud District this week.

All of the applications can be viewed via the planning section of Stroud District Councils website.

CONVERSION AND UPGRADE OF EXISTING OUTBUILDING TO ANNEXE FOR ELDERLY RELATIVE AT STARSMEAD FARMHOUSE, HARESFIELD, GL10 3EG.

Application number: S.20/2130/FUL

Status: Awaiting decision

ERECTION OF TWO DWELLINGS AND ASSOCIATED WORKS ON LAND AT 331 WESTWARD ROAD, EBLEY.

Application number: S.20/2119/FUL

Status: Awaiting decision

ERECTION OF POLY TUNNEL AT STROUD SLAD FARM, SLAD LANE, STROUD.

Application number: S.20/2106/AGR

Status: Awaiting decision

CONSTRUCTION OF RETAINING WALL TO CREATE TWO NEW PARKING BAYS (PRIVATE USE), INSTALL AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING POINT AND REBUILD THE COLLAPSING PARKING BAY OPPOSITE SOUTH VIEW COTTAGE, AT BOX COTTAGE, DOWNEND, HORSLEY.

Application number: S.20/2100/FUL

Status: Awaiting decision

NEW DWELLING ON LAND AT 4 FOXES DELL, FOREST GREEN, NAILSWORTH.

Application number: S.20/2081/FUL

Status: Awaiting decision

COVERED OUTDOOR SEATING AREA IN CONNECTION WITH AN EXISTING RESTAURANT, AT AMALFI RESTAURANT, 16 THE OLD CROWN, MARKET STREET, NAILSWORTH.

Application number: S.20/2064/FUL

Status: Awaiting decision

ERECTION OF A SHIPLAP SUMMER HOUSE AT SPRING CORNER, ROCKNESS HILL, NAILSWORTH.

Application number: S.20/2061/CPL

Status: Awaiting decision

A FREESTANDING ADVERTISING SIGN MOUNTED ON STEEL POSTS AT STONE CRICKET CLUB, SWANLEY, ALKINGTON, BERKELEY.

Application number: S.20/2011/ADV

Status: Awaiting decision

PROPOSED ERECTION OF 6 X 15 METRE FLOODLIGHT MASTS AT HAMFIELDS LEISURE, HAMFIELD LANE, BERKELEY.

Application number: S.20/1907/FUL

Status: Awaiting decision

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PLANNING: A round-up of planning applications put forward in Stroud this week - Stroud News and Journal

Only if you were living under a rock in 2015 could you have missed then-Mayor Mitch Landrieus proposal which generated no shortage of headlines, discussion and, in some quarters, outrage to remove three prominent Confederate monuments and the White supremacist Liberty Monument from the New Orleans landscape.

And not even under-rock dwellers could have avoided the extended public kerfuffle when those monuments came tumbling down in 2017.

Reader Karen Plauche, however, is curious about another conspicuous but architecturally significant Confederate landmark spared by Landrieus efforts.

That would be the 129-year-old Memorial Hall, the castle-like structure at 929 Camp St. housing Louisianas oldest museum and home to one of the largest collections of Confederate artifacts in the country.

Plauches question: Was the unique building that houses the Confederate museum built for that purpose, or did it have another use originally? Whats its story?

The answer to the first question is easy: Yes, it was indeed built as a Confederate museum.

A portrait of Frank T. Howard as published Jan. 8, 1891, in The Daily Picayune. Howard provided the funding for Memorial Hall, an annex of the Howard Memorial Library on Camp Street, for use as a Confederate museum.

As for the rest of its story, that will take a little more time.

It starts with New Orleans philanthropist Frank T. Howard, who in 1881 had completed work on the Howard Library, built in memory of his father, businessman Charles T. Howard, on a parcel adjacent to the future site of Memorial Hall.

(That site, incidentally, is but a stones throw from Lee Circle, giving the museum a front-row seat to the 2017 removal of the citys once-iconic Robert E. Lee statue.)

Given his fathers fascination with the Civil War, the younger Howard invited Confederate veterans to house their personal artifacts uniforms, flags, guns, books, maps and the like in the Howard Library. The collection quickly grew, and plans were put in motion to build an annex next door to house them all.

That annex would be Memorial Hall, completed in 1890 25 years after the end of the Civil War and smack in the middle of the Lost Cause era, during which the Confederate struggle was held up as heroic and righteous.

Designed by prominent New Orleans architect Thomas Sully, the one-story brick building, which includes a basement, was constructed in the same Richardson Romanesque style as the Howard Library and originally consisted chiefly of one long main room, measuring about 96 feet long, 24 feet wide and with a 24-foot high ceiling.

Its outer walls are of pressed brick, ornamented with richly carved semi-glazed terracotta trimmings, while the retaining wall and steps are of Long Meadow brown stone, reads the successful 1975 application to have the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some buildings are eye-catching because theyre so grand. Others are eye-catching because theyre unique. Still others stand out simply becaus

Also located on the buildings front is a two-story octagonal tower and an ornate entrance portico lined by columns and topped with a variation of a cross patte, a version of which would later become the model for the Southern Cross of Honor Medal awarded by the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Inside, the buildings vaulted cathedral ceiling, highlighted by exposed trusses, was lined with various Confederate banners, according to a description published in The Times-Picayune upon the buildings opening. Its interior walls are still lined with panels of polished cypress.

Right away, the building became a magnet for meetings and reunions of Confederate veterans. Most notably, the remains of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis having been exhumed from Metairie Cemetery and headed for reburial in Richmond lay in state at Memorial Hall for a day in May 1893, drawing throngs of mourners and sightseers.

Meanwhile, the museums collection continued to grow. By 1887, it warranted construction of an upper gallery running the buildings length, according to the National Register application.

While it is recognized as architecturally significant, the building has been the subject of repeated ownership disputes over the years, most recently involving the University of New Orleans.

Upon its dedication on Jan. 8, 1891 not coincidentally the 75th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans it was donated by Howard to the Louisiana Historical Association, the group formed to operate the museum, for its perpetual use.

It was 1881, and cotton was king throughout the South and particularly in New Orleans.

But in the 1990s, UNO came into possession of the original Howard Library building after the library moved to Tulane Universitys campus. It claimed rights to the hall, because its an annex of the library building, and expressed its desire to evict the museum.

Complicating matters was the fact that Memorial Hall essentially bisected UNOs Ogden Museum of Southern Art, which occupies the former Howard Library building now the Patrick F. Taylor Library on Memorial Halls southernmost side and the Goldring building on Memorial Halls north side.

A bitter, back-and-forth legal battle has since thawed. Today, the bigger threat to Memorial Hall and its collection is probably perception, with many casting a jaundiced eye at what is often seen as a glorification of the Confederacy and its racist roots.

For now, however, the museum and the historic building housing it remains.

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archives, National Register of Historic Places.

Its hard to imagine now with the cacophonous pageant that plays out there regularly pandemic or no pandemic, apparently but there was a t

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The history stored in Memorial Hall is controversial, but the building has a story of its own - NOLA.com

Derbyshire County Council usually spends around 23million a year on road maintenance and improvements.

This year extra money has been pledged by the government for road maintenance, including potholes, and the council has successfully bid for a further 5million for retaining wall and drainage works on the A6 between Matlock and Whatstandwell.

More than 3million will be spent on vital maintenance work on bridges and retaining walls, with 21 sets of traffic lights that are nearing the end of their working lives being replaced.

To prevent accidents more than 1million will be spent on road safety schemes, such as putting down skid resistant surfaces or changes to road junctions.

And two roads currently closed because of landslips will be repaired Lea Road near Cromford and Abney Clough in the High Peak.

Work by specialist contractors starts this month, with the roads expected to re-open by the end of the year.

Derbyshire County Councils cabinet member for highways, transport and infrastructure, councillor Simon Spencer, said: This investment in our road network will make a significant difference to everyone who lives, works or travels through Derbyshire.

Im delighted that the government has recognised the need for additional funding and also that weve been successful in bidding for extra money for specific schemes.

It all adds up to a huge investment in our roads.

To help deliver the work the council are about to start a recruitment drive for civil engineers.

Skills in design, scheme delivery, maintenance and more are all needed at a variety of different level from managers to civil engineering technicians.

More information about becoming a civil engineer and the jobs available can be found by logging on to derbyshire.gov.uk/civilengineeringjobs.

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More than 40million to be spent on improving Derbyshire's roads - Ilkeston Advertiser

THE suburbs of Kenny Hills and Damansara Heights may share the same adjective prime but the similarities end there.

Kenny Hills and Damansara Height are vastly different. Beginning with the land, land price is determined by size, according to an agent who declined to be named, .

The land size in Damansara Heights is between 5,000 to 15,000 sq ft; the average is about 7,500 sq ft.

At an average price of about RM600 per sq ft, the average land price in Damansara Heights is about RM4.5mil, minus the building.

In Kenny Hills, the average land price is about RM300 per sq ft but the average land size is about 30,000 sq ft, which translates to RM10mil.

So, it is all a matter of averages, when you see the land price like that. The building price comes next. Building materials cost is the same, so that is a constant, whether you build in Kenny Hills or in Damansara Heights, on flat land or others. So we have to talk about the variables.

No two pieces of land, even in the same location, are the same. So there are different prices. The price of a house is determined by the buyer and seller, and this is affected by circumstances like market sentiments and Covid-19, as is the case today. Income levels and the confidence of the buyer/seller are other factors. But these are not important. What is important is what is the average price? And how much a buyer wants the house, he says.

The other difference is the look and feel of both locations.

To use an analogy, figuratively, a small house in a big garden is what sets Kenny Hills apart from Damansara Heights big house in a small garden.

There are about 120 freehold units in Kenny Hills, which is also known as Bukit Tunku. It is different from the adjacent Taman Duta, which is mainly leasehold. There are a lot more units in Damansara Heights, so the density is higher there than in Kenny Hills. An acre may have eight units in Damansara Heights versus two in Kenny Hills.

Anything coming from a developer will not give the Kenny Hills impression because the real Kenny Hills is 30,000 sq ft or more of land with an individual house with more than 20,000 sq ft of gentle rolling greens, or a slope of green vegetation with trees that may have been there for close to 100 years or more.

This vast gentle or slopping contours, and with a single house sitting on it, is what sets it apart from all other prime suburbs in the city.

So, if a developer comes along, bulldozes all the trees, and puts up a retaining wall to maximise land use, and carves the land into little plots, the spirit and feel of Kenny Hills will go missing.

In Damansara Heights, you can hear your neighbour. In Kenny Hills, the people dont want to see their neighbour, he says.

The infrastructure like width of roads are also affected by the slopes in Kenny Hills. So, the infrastructure there is unable to handle the density that is a familiar theme in Damansara Heights. This is a natural factor of Kenny Hills.

This explains why the average land price may be RM300 per sq ft because much of the land may be on slopes. But there are some plots that are able to command a higher price because of the land terrain. So, there is a big price range in terms of land prices; the variables go up and down from the average RM300 per sq ft.

Both Kenny Hills and Damansara Heights have empty nesters. Their children may be abroad and they want a modern new lifestyle. One may need thousands of ringgit in order to maintain the garden, the trees, have security or hire some guards and other outgoings to keep the place in order.

In a nutshell, both Kenny Hills and Damansara Heights have three issues empty nesters, security and culture. Culture is not definitive, class even less so.

Class is culture that takes years to build. You cannot have class without culture. You may have culture, but you may not have class.

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Hills and Heights, a difference in class - The Star Online

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) announced on Oct. 1 that a settlement resolving charges against Landmark Americana bars in Glassboro and Ewing, stemming from two fatal accidents involving patrons in 2018 and 2019, was signed.

The settlement is a global resolution of numerous charges filed against corporate entities held by Antonio Cammarata, Fillippo Cammarata, Massimo Cammarata and David Goldman.

Together, these individuals have liquor licenses for Landmark Ewing, Landmark Glassboro and WineWorks liquor store in Evesham under various corporate names.

According to a consent order with the ABC, this settlement entails an agreement to sell the liquor license for the Landmark in Glassboro within two years and pay $550,000.

The consent order contains several restrictions aimed to curtail patronage of Landmark in Glassboro. The settlement does not include the Landmark Liquor store.

The consent order states the following restrictions on the Landmark in Glassboro: a last call at 11:30 p.m. and no alcoholic beverages sold after midnight, no amplified music or live DJ on-site, a ban on using the nightclub room except for private parties not open to the general public or dining and a ban on offering patrons one free drink as a goodwill gesture or offering coupons, tickets or tokens to redeem a free drink.

Additionally, it requires all alcoholic beverages to be sold, delivered and dispensed following industry standards: a five-ounce pour for wine, a 12-ounce bottle or can for malt beverages and a 16-ounce draft pour for malt alcoholic beverages.

According to the press release, the charges listed numerous violations committed in both establishments in 2018 and 2019, including operating a public nuisance requiring law enforcement responses on multiple occasions, serving an underage patron and three separate instances serving intoxicated patrons, two of which led to fatal crashes.

On Oct. 11, 2019, Robert Gallagher, 21, of Monroe Township left Landmark Glassboro after hours of drinking, lost control of his car and crashed into a retaining wall.

Gallagher died as a result of his injuries, and his passenger was injured. At the time of the incident, Gallagher had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit for driving.

Gallaghers death came just ten months after a similar incident occurred at Landmark Ewing, which resulted in the arrest of 22-year-old David Lamar of West Windsor on Dec. 2, 2018.

Like Gallagher, Lamar was driving with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit after leaving Landmark in the early hours. According to the press release, Lamar crashed head-on into a car carrying six The College of New Jersey students back to campus, which killed the cars designated driver and wounded all five passengers, one critically.

Lamar and his passenger also sustained injuries in the crash. Facing charges including manslaughter, Lamar was released on house arrest in January 2019 until his trial.

These cases illustrate why liquor licenses must be responsible in their service of alcohol to all patrons, not just drivers, Acting Director James B. Graziano of the ABC said. Both of these bars not only over-served the drivers in these fatal crashes; in two instances, they over-served the victims. These were patrons whose judgment became so impaired they willingly got into cars driven by someone they knew had consumed considerable amounts of alcohol, which resulted in their deaths.

The ABCs investigation revealed that in both cases, the Landmark staff over-served Lamar and Gallagher. State law prohibits licensed establishments from selling alcoholic beverages to any patrons actually or apparently intoxicated.

Today we are holding the owners of Landmark Americana responsible for the role they played in the tragic deaths of two young people, who we allege would be alive today if not for the irresponsible conduct of Landmark Americana and its staff, Graziano said. These deaths are a grim reminder of what can happen when establishments fail to comply with laws requiring them to serve alcohol responsibly, especially when catering to young patrons in a college setting.

For comments/questions about this story, email news@thewhitonline.com or tweet @TheWhitOnline.

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Landmark Americana to Sell Liquor License and Curtail Service in Global Resolution - The Whit Online

By: Kitchen Tune-Up | 1Shares 79Reads

October 07, 2020 // Franchising.com // ABERDEEN, SD. - Kitchen Tune-Up, a national kitchen remodeling company known for five service options to update kitchens and cabinetry, hosted a virtual annual convention and awards ceremony from September 21-23. Embodying the theme of One Tuniverse, hundreds of attendees, including franchisees, home office team members, and suppliers came together for the event.

Encompassing the theme of One Tuniverse, this years convention motivated franchisees to tunify their professional development and customer experience skills. Equal parts fun and inspiring, the three-day convention hosted Kitchen Tune-Up franchisees from across the nation to engage during sales, customer experience, project planning, recruiting and hiring workshops.

Shawn Van Dyke, national construction industry thought leader and esteemed business coach, and Tommy Mello, contractor marketing expert, were keynote speakers at the event.

While our reunion looked different this year, the takeaways, insights and ideas shared were more powerful than ever. Everyone got a chance to learn best practices and participate in small group discussions, both in a formal and casual setting, said Heidi Morrissey, president of the Kitchen Tune-Up Franchise System. Our team put in extra hours to pull it off and our owners all showed up and gave their best to make it an amazing virtual event.

Kitchen Tune-Ups One Tuniverse National Reunion was held virtually from September 21-23. Model franchisees were honored with their awards on the reunions final evening. The various awards ranged from the Fast Track Award, National Customer Service Award, Dave Haglund Entrepreneur Award, and the Franny of the Year Award. Each award highlights stellar franchisees that exemplify Kitchen Tune-Ups service standards, or Trustpoints.

Kitchen Tune-Up is a company that has built its reputation on trust, top service and amazing results. The award-winning company has established itself as the industry leader with more than 32 years of success behind it. Kitchen Tune-Up is meeting the growing demand for homeowners seeking to update and upgrade the look of their kitchens throughout the country with its customized service and incredible results.

Founded in 1988, Kitchen Tune-Up specializes in five ways to update kitchens and cabinetry. Services include its signature 1 Day Tune-Up, cabinet painting, cabinet refacing, cabinet redooring, and new cabinets. With 218 franchised territories nationwide, Kitchen Tune-Up has been named to Entrepreneurs Franchise 500 list in 2020. Kitchen Tune-Up offers personalized service and incredible results that are structured around customer service Trustpoints to ensure a hassle-free experience from start to finish.

For more information about Kitchen Tune-Up, please visit their website.

SOURCE Kitchen Tune-Up

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Kitchen Tune-Up Franchise System Embodies Theme of One Tuniverse at Annual National Reunion - Franchising.com

Introduction

County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the chief executive of Harris County, Texas, worried about an undercount in the 2020 census long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

The county, the largest in Texas, has about 4.7 million residents, about 1 million of whom Hidalgo says fall into categories that are considered hard to count: More than 60% are Latino or Black, almost half speak a language other than English at home, a quarter are immigrants, and many are renters. An estimated 61,500 residents werent counted in the 2010 census.

The census will impact their political power over the next decade, controlling how congressional districts are redrawn in 2021 and how many people will represent Texas in Congress. And it will determine what federal funding the county, which includes the city of Houston, will receive for critical public services, from health care to education. An undercount in the 2010 census cost the county $1,161 per person in a single year under just five federal programs, more than $71 million total, according to one estimate.

An undercount doesnt just affect politics and general funding: It impairs local communities ability to effectively respond to public health emergencies, like the current pandemic, by making it harder to track the spread of disease and who is suffering the most.

Harris County and Houston were determined to avoid being undercounted this year. They spent a combined $5.5 million, bringing together community groups, marketing and data specialists, and activists to build the smartest census campaign Harris County had seen, Hidalgo said.

But the Trump administration has repeatedly stood in the way of a complete count. President Donald Trump has pursued policies that make immigrants less likely to respond. The census officials he appointed, for example, decided to conclude operations weeks earlier than they had previously announced, leaving little time to reach the people who are hardest to count despite a pandemic that has made such people even more elusive.

The administration made these decisions against the advice of experts and its own career staff at the U.S. Census Bureau, sabotaging local officials efforts to improve response rates in Harris County and in many other communities across the U.S. that have long borne the costs of being undercounted.

Whats at stake here is a core function of democracy laid out in the Constitution, which directs the federal government to conduct an actual Enumeration every 10 years and to apportion representatives based on the whole number of persons in each State. Administrations controlled by both Democrats and Republicans have historically taken those words to mean that any person living in the U.S., regardless of immigration status, race, how wealthy they are or where they live, should be counted in the census.

But Trump has turned his back on that precedent, pursuing policies that suppress the count among hard-to-count communities including immigrants, people of color, low-income individuals and those in rural areas and effectively disenfranchise them. In addition to cutting counting efforts short, he tried to put a question about citizenship status on the census before the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately prevented him from doing so. And now, hes seeking to exclude immigrants from census population counts that will be used to apportion congressional representatives.

Its a transparent power grab from Trump laid bare in court filings and other documents on behalf of Republicans, who arent favored by most of those hard-to-count groups.

As a result, Harris Countys self-response rate stands at less than 63% as of Oct. 6, a few points below its 2010 rate. Nationally, the U.S. has met its 2010 self-response rate of 66.5%, but there are concerns that the Census Bureau doesnt have enough time to follow up with people who didnt respond.

Its not good for the country and its not good for democracy, Hidalgo said. Participation is what makes our democracy strong. If people are afraid to get counted in something as basic as the census, of course theyre going to be intimidated to make their voices heard more broadly.

Even without the Trump administrations intervention, there were an unusual number of complications that posed a threat to completing the count this year, from a raging pandemic to wildfires and hurricanes that have ripped through the South and the West Coast. But on top of that, Trump has sought to politicize the process more than ever before.

Everything is adding up to one of the most flawed censuses in history, said Rob Santos, vice president and chief methodologist at the Urban Institute and president-elect of the American Statistical Association.

The political power of any one voter is largely determined by the census, which is the basis for how states draw congressional districts and how the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are divided among the states. When new districts are drawn in 2021, it will have a lasting influence on who is likely to win elections, which communities will be represented and, ultimately, which laws will be passed.

It appears that, based on projections from 2019 Census Bureau population estimates, the states with the most to gain are Texas, which could pick up three seats in the U.S. House, and Florida, which could pick up two seats.

But there are more concrete issues at stake. Census population counts are frequently used to create statistical indicators, including poverty thresholds and the consumer price index, which are typically used to determine federal funding levels for 300 programs encompassing health care, food stamps, highways and transportation, education, public housing, unemployment insurance, and public safety, among others.

Funding for certain programs, including the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, doesnt fluctuate drastically with census population counts. But funding for other programs including the Social Services Block Grant, which helps support tailored social services based on community need is predicated entirely on the states share of the national population recorded in the census.

Census population counts could also determine whether certain areas qualify for federal designations that are tied to benefits. They could dictate whether a rural town is designated as medically underserved, meaning that doctors could receive certain incentives for working there or whether an economically distressed community gets classified as an opportunity zone where new investors get preferential tax treatment.

The effects of an undercount can linger for decades. In March, census data dictated how a $150 billion federal COVID-19 relief fund was distributed to localities. Places that had been undercounted in 2010 werent getting all the resources they needed.

An inaccurate count can have further adverse implications for public health, particularly amid a pandemic. It could hinder efforts to plan for the populations health care needs and result in a shortage of available safety net services.

It could also make it harder to track demographic groups along the dimensions of race and ethnicity, income, and education in order to better protect those who experience worse health outcomes. And it could limit researchers ability to study and respond to disease, making it more difficult to predict its spread and estimate its prevalence in the population.

Going forward, funding for health care and public transportation is among Hidalgos biggest concerns in Harris County, where about 22% of the population under 65 is uninsured twice the national rate and it remains difficult to get around without a car due to a lack of investment in transit services.

Losing out on federal funds for Medicaid would be particularly devastating: Texas is one of 12 states that have yet to adopt the Affordable Care Acts Medicaid expansion, a joint state-federal program that has offered health care coverage to individuals with incomes below 138% of the poverty line (about $17,600 for a single adult) since 2016.

Texas Republicans had previously rejected calls to adopt the expansion on the grounds that it would raise health care costs across the state. Those calls have been renewed amid the pandemic, but an undercount in the census, which determines how much federal funding the state receives to administer Medicaid, could make the expansion prohibitively expensive.

Other cities like San Jose, California which also has a history of being undercounted in the census have different funding priorities.

A census undercount would deliver a blow to the citys budget for affordable housing, which is sorely needed in an area with such a high cost of living: A couple making as much as $140,000 per year is in need of affordable housing. And in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis that has left many people jobless and homeless, the affordable housing shortage has only become more dire.

We have been somewhat of a poster child for the affordable housing crisis as the largest city in Silicon Valley facing skyrocketing rents for much of the last decade and a large population with constrained income, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.

The city stands to lose about $2,000 of federal money per year for every person who isnt counted, he said.

The country faces a pandemic that has made the most basic of in-person tasks more complex. Wildfires and hurricanes have displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. All of this has made it more difficult for the Census Bureau to go door to door to ensure an accurate count.

When the pandemic delayed operations in March, the censuss end date was pushed back from August 15 to Oct. 31. But in August, the Census Bureau announced that it would stop soliciting responses by mail, online or in person on Sept. 30. The agency argued this was necessary to meet the Dec. 31 deadline to provide census figures to Congress.

Internal Census Bureau emails and memos released in court filings showed that the administration decided to go forward with its plan despite warnings from career officials who worried that cutting short counting efforts would result in a census that has fatal data quality flaws that are unacceptable for a Constitutionally-mandated national activity. But those warnings fell on deaf ears at the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau and is headed by Wilbur Ross, one of the longest-serving members of the presidents Cabinet who previously was at the front of the administrations push to put a citizenship question on the census.

The decision to cut the census short was also made despite advice from the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, which unanimously recommended in mid-September that the administration extend the deadline to complete counting efforts due to 2020s natural disasters.

The Census Bureau estimates that about 80,000 uncounted households in California and 17,500 in Oregon were impacted by the wildfires, and that 248,000 uncounted households in Alabama and Florida and 34,000 in Louisiana have been impacted by hurricanes over the past two months.

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The Census Bureau has redirected enumerators to temporary shelters for those displaced by the hurricanes. But on the Pacific Coast, it had already started laying off workers in areas affected by fire evacuations, road closures and smoke-filled air, KQED reported.

Imagine how hard it is to track somebody who is in a position where theyre not at their house, they are who knows where, and trying to complete a census with them, a census worker in California told Vox.

The mans experience demonstrates how fires affect census operations in other ways. Hes in his 60s, and said he has been concerned about going outside to enumerate people while the air quality is so poor due to the wildfires. On Sept. 9, when smoke turned the skies dark orange, he went out with two masks an N95 mask and a cloth mask layered on top of that but when he took them off briefly to drink some water, he started to get a headache.

The following day, he called his supervisor to say that he wouldnt be able to go out due to health concerns. Both during training and on the job, the Census Bureau made clear that his safety as an enumerator comes first, he said. But cases he had been assigned werent completed.

Dilemmas like this are playing out across the country as communities grapple with natural disasters.

I really cant project whether Mother Natures going to let us finish. Were going to do the best we can and see where we end up, the associate director of the census, Al Fontenot, said during the recent advisory committee meeting.

Santos, of the Urban Institute, said that to capture households that failed to self-report, the Census Bureau will have to rely heavily on reports from their neighbors, which are not as accurate. It could also lead to housing units getting categorized as vacant when there are people living there, but the census taker cannot reach them and does not have the opportunity to follow up.

The Census Bureau will also have to rely on administrative records, including Social Security and IRS data. That could be a problem hard-to-count households are precisely the kind of households for which the federal government lacks reliable administrative records. For instance, unauthorized immigrants do not have Social Security numbers and may rely on a cash economy without filing taxes with the IRS (though many of them do file taxes).

Imagine how hard it is to track somebody who is in a position where theyre not at their house, they are who knows where, and trying to complete a census with them.

Everything hinges on the quality of those data, Santos said.

As of Oct. 6, the Census Bureau reported that about 99.7% of households nationwide have been counted. As with any census, the agency is aiming to count 100% of households.

But that rate says little about the accuracy of the bureaus data, how it was collected, whether it has been checked for quality and how this census measures up to previous censuses, said Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service, which tracks hard-to-count populations in the census. In the final days of September, there were still areas where census workers had yet to complete about 30% of their assigned workload, which includes conducting in-person follow-up visits to households. Those places included broad swaths of New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.

The concern is that the Census Bureau is trying to move as quickly as they can to make sure that, one way or another, all housing units are accounted for not necessarily by enumerating them in person, Romalewski said.

For now, the Census Bureau is still continuing to solicit responses. A federal judge in California has ordered the agency not to wind down its operations yet, as part of a lawsuit challenging the new deadline brought by civil rights groups, local governments and the Navajo Nation, among others. Temporarily blocking the Trump administration from ending counting efforts on Sept. 30, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh extended the deadline until Oct. 31 to give the Census Bureau more time to collect responses online, by mail and by door-knocking in undercounted areas.The Trump administration had asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately suspend Kohs ruling, but the court told the administration that it had to keep counting. Unless the administration seeks expedited review at the Supreme Court, as it has threatened in court filings, it appears the Oct. 31 end date will remain.

The U.S. is on track to become a majority-nonwhite nation sometime in the 2040s, with Latinos accounting for a large portion of that growth. For Republicans who have relied on primarily non-Latino white, rural voters to stay in office, those demographic changes could spell their political doom.

But even before Trump, they had hatched a plan to maintain their grip on power for at least a little while longer: They would exclude noncitizens from the census population counts used to redraw congressional districts. The late Republican political strategist Thomas Hofeller was the mastermind behind the plan, which he believed could keep state legislatures in Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Florida from flipping blue in the near future. It would have the effect of diluting the political power of foreign-born people who have primarily settled in Democrat-run cities relative to more rural, Republican-run areas.

Trump, for his part, has embraced the strategy and taken it even further. Beyond attempting to cut short the process of collecting responses to the census, which will likely hit immigrants and communities of color the hardest, he has also tried to curb immigrant participation in the census.

Trump previously sought to put a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census. Several states, including California and New York, challenged the question in court on the basis that it would depress response rates among immigrant communities, leading to an undercount that would cost their governments critical federal funding. Their lawsuit came before the Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor in June 2019 on the basis that the Trump administration had lied about why it chose to include the question on the census.

Trump had argued that citizenship data would aid the Justice Departments enforcement of the prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting. But that rationale was just a pretext, introduced after the fact to justify the question and meant to obscure the administrations actual reasoning, the justices found.

Had the administration decided to continue pursuing the citizenship question, it would have had to race to support its decision with more valid reasoning in order to print the census forms on time.

Trump ultimately decided against doing so, instead issuing an executive order in July 2019 that instructed the Census Bureau to estimate citizenship data using enhanced state administrative records.

Trump has facilitated the creation of that data, though its not clear how accurate it is. The executive order authorized the Census Bureau to collect more data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship and Immigration Services in an attempt to identify the citizenship status of more people. The agency eventually started asking states to voluntarily turn over drivers license records, which typically include citizenship data, to determine the citizenship status of the U.S. population.

In July, Trump revealed how he intended to use that data: He issued a memorandum excluding unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. from census population counts for purposes of redrawing congressional districts in 2021, as legislators in Texas, Arizona, Missouri and Nebraska had already sought.

The White House argued that, by law, the president has the final say over who must be counted in the census. And Trump has said that unauthorized immigrants should not be counted because it would undermine American representative democracy and create perverse incentives for those seeking to come to the U.S.

A federal court nevertheless struck down the memorandum last month, finding that the federal government has a constitutional obligation to count every person, no matter their immigration status, in the census every 10 years.

But the Trump administration appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to expedite the case such that they would hear oral arguments in December and issue a decision before Dec. 31, the federal deadline for sending the population counts to Congress for purposes of redistricting.

If Trumps Supreme Court pick to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Amy Coney Barrett, is confirmed before the end of the year, she could cast a deciding vote in the case.

Even though Trumps attempts to substantively alter the way immigrants are counted in the census have been thwarted by the courts so far, the chilling effect of those policies has been felt in places like Harris County and San Jose, which both have large immigrant communities and have joined the lawsuits challenging Trumps attempts to cut the census short and exclude unauthorized immigrants from the population counts.

Liccardo said that when the city began its census planning two and a half years ago, it prioritized engaging trusted community partners, including local churches and nonprofits. The aim of that was to allay fears about participating in the census among people who might be fearful of interacting with government officials, including immigrant communities from Latin America and Asia. Some 80,000 residents of the city dont have legal status.

Their fear only multiplies when they hear what comes out of the White House Twitter feed, he said. They have consequently become reluctant to engage not only in the census but also in the pursuit of basic services, such as immunizing their children and signing up for food stamps.

Every family has got someone whos worried about getting arrested by la migra, he said.

Hidalgo said that in Harris County, parents are similarly afraid to receive a backpack for their child as part of a government giveaway and to access free testing for COVID-19, potentially threatening their health outcomes.

Theres clearly a distrust of government, she said. Folks are just afraid to receive any kind of service, and that puts the entire community at risk.

Campaigns to get out the count have had to adjust to major hurdles, from the pandemic to unfavorable policies from the Trump administration. Starting in March, they had to largely abandon in-person outreach, the most effective way to reach hard-to-count households, in favor of strategies that allow for social distancing.

Texas Counts, a coalition of groups working to improve response rates in the state where about one in four residents qualifies as hard-to-count partnered with locations offering essential services amid the pandemic, including food banks, so that volunteers can encourage people to fill out the census questionnaire while they are waiting in line. It has also helped host census caravans in which people decorate their cars with advertisements for the census and drive through undercounted areas, honking their horns.

These kinds of canvassing efforts do appear to make a difference. Romalewski, who studied similar neighborhood campaigns in Tucson and Brooklyn, said that response levels in those census tracts did increase. (Though its not clear whether that increase was greater than it would have been otherwise or whether it could be directly attributed to the outreach efforts.)

Harris County pivoted to an almost entirely virtual campaign, which it funded in part with an additional $4 million the county received in funding from the coronavirus stimulus bill passed in March on top of the $5.5 million it had already spent.

Door-knocking morphed into texting and calling. Census workers conducted surveys about the opinions and attitudes of non-responsive populations and developed a digital advertising campaign on Facebook and Instagram. They placed billboards and ads with the aim of targeting communities with a less than 50% response rate.

Still, the response rate only budged a couple of percentage points. Hidalgo isnt expecting to be able to vastly improve response rates leading up to the deadline. Theyre doing their best, but the headwinds theyre facing are just too strong.

You can do everything right and still you will only see a couple percentage-point increase over what you have, she said. But its better than it could have been had we not been working aggressively to make up ground.

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Trump's obstruction of the 2020 census, explained Center for Public Integrity - Center for Public Integrity