The U.S. Census Bureau recently appointed a slate of managers for a new 2010 Census office in Wilmington located at 3147 South 17th St., Suite 101, near Cameron Art Museum in the old PPD building.

The new managers, all area residents, are: Anthony Osticco, local census office manager; Arthur Reffelt, assistant manger for field operations; Mark Bolduc, assistant manager for quality assurance; Joseph Chizmar, assistant manager for administration; Sandra Henderson, assistant manager for recruiting; and Richard Landry, assistant manager for technology.

The Wilmington office will support census operations in six counties: Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover, Pender and Robeson.

Five offices opened in 2008 to carry out operations to prepare for the census in the state. They are located in Asheville, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Greenville and Greensboro. The Wilmington office is one of 10 new local census offices in North Carolina, bringing the total number to 15.

The managers bring a wealth of experience to the 2010 Census. Anthony Osticco, local census office manager, worked in the retail automobile industry for the past 35 years, working his way up from sales representative to financing manager and into management.

Assistant Manager for Field Operations Arthur Reffelt has worked in the advertising and beverage-distribution industries, most recently as vice president of a Chicago advertising agency.

Mark Bolduc, assistant manager for quality assurance, recently retired from Nortel networks in Raleigh as a project manager. Bolduc, a U.S. Air Force veteran, spent 18 years at Digital Equipment Corp. as operations manager, overseeing quality control and production.

Joseph Chizmar, assistant manager for administration, owned a mobile reconditioning franchise for the last four years. He also worked in retail management for more than 19 years.

Assistant Manager for Recruiting Sandra Henderson volunteered as chief judge for the Wilmington Board of Elections and has assisted in voter registration.  She worked in the telecommunications industry for nearly 33 years.

Richard Landry, assistant manager for technology, retired from IBM after 30 years. A U.S. Navy veteran, he worked in manufacturing and system development in New York and in Research Triangle Park.
Census counts are used to determine the number of congressional seats for each state, the shape of legislative and local government districts, and how more than $400 billion in federal funds is distributed annually to communities across the country.

April 1, 2010, is Census Day, the reference day for collecting census information from every household in America. Census questionnaires will be mailed or delivered in mid-March. The North Carolina offices will close after census operations end in 2010.