Description of Populations Served

The Township of Jefferson Dial A Ride system serves communities within the Township of Jefferson. The Township of Jefferson Dial A Ride operates in the Township of Jefferson and transports to medical facilities within a 12 to 15 mile radius of the Township’s municipal building. Transportation is also provided to Jefferson residents that need to connect to the Morris Area Paratransit System. For the purpose of this document, the study area includes all of the Township of Jefferson’s service area.

Statistics

American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates from 2013 reveal that at the county level, while there are numerous languages spoken at home, there are four languages spoken where more than 1,000 people speak English less than very well. Those four languages are included in the following table.

Source

American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates, 2013.  It is noted that this data categorizes Limited English Proficiency as persons who speak English “less than very well”, which includes residents who speak English “well”, while Limited English Proficient (LEP) is generally considered persons who speak English “not well” or “not at all”.  This definition artificially inflates all of the LEP person’s total, including raising the number of Chinese and Russian LEP persons above the 1,000 person threshold.

Other Asian Languages is not a specific language, but instead a group of languages with no detail regarding the number of LEP persons for each language included, so it  does not require any specific consideration in relation to the Safe Harbor Provision.

Languages at the County Level

Total Population with Limited English Proficiency

As of July 1, 2014, the Township of Jefferson had a total population of 21,483 residents, which 10.8%  are over 65 years of age. Morris County has a population of 499,727 which 76.1 percent speak only English, while the remaining 23.9 percent speak other languages, either in addition to or instead of English. The Township of Jefferson has 12.8 percent of the total population represent the LEP population; that is, English is not their primary language and they speak English “not well” or “not at all.” This compares to the State LEP population of 30 percent.

Limited English Proficiency by Language / Language Group

Much like the State overall, the largest share of the LEP population in the Township of Jefferson speaks English as their primary language. Statewide, 30 percent of the LEP population ages five and older are Spanish-speaking. In the Township of Jefferson, 9.3 percent of the LEP population ages five and older speak Spanish as their primary language. This group represents 12.1 percent of the county’s total population ages five and older.      

Spanish

With the exception of census tracts located in the Township of Jefferson, all of the high-LEP census tracts contain a higher percentage of Spanish-speaking LEP persons than the county average. The greatest concentrations of Spanish-speaking LEP persons in the county (over 10 percent of the total population ages five and older), are concentrated in Morristown. The census tracts in the central part of Morristown contain the highest concentration of Spanish-speaking LEP persons in the Township of Jefferson. Between 25 and 30 percent of the total population ages five and older in those tracts are LEP and Spanish-speaking.      

Other Languages

 LEP persons who speak Indo-European languages other than English or Spanish are heavily concentrated in the Morristown area. In the census tracts that make up these communities, LEP persons who speak “other Indo-European” languages range from 7.9 percent of the LEP population.

Within the cluster of census tracts with high LEP populations, of which more than half speak other Indo-European languages, there is spatial separation related to which languages are spoken. In the Township of Jefferson, the most frequently spoken Indo-European language is Yiddish, due to the large populations of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in those communities. Russian, German, Polish and Urdu are other commonly spoken languages in those communities.

Asian & Pacific Islanders

LEP persons who speak Asian and Pacific Island languages makeup of the LEP population in CDP (1.1%). In addition, there are significant numbers of LEP persons who speak Asian and Pacific Island languages who do not live in high-LEP census tracts. More than 2,365 LEP persons who speak these languages are located in other census tracts. The primary concentrations of LEP persons who speak languages other than the following are located in the Morristown area:

• Asian
• French Creole
• Pacific Island
• Russian
• Spanish
• Yiddish

Limited English Proficient Population Concentrations & Transit Service

The concentrations of population with Limited English Proficiency are predominantly located in one cluster among several of the county’s urbanized villages; these areas are heavily served by the Township of Jefferson Dial A Ride program. At the heart of the largest cluster of high-LEP census tracts, the Township of Jefferson provides access to the Morris Area Paratransit system.