Census forms begin arriving in Utahns' mailboxes Monday

SALT LAKE CITY — It happens only once every 10 years, and the moment has officially come: 2010 Census forms began arriving in mailboxes Monday.

"It's one of the shortest forms in our lifetime, with just 10 questions," said Census Bureau director Robert M. Groves, who adds that it should take just 10 minutes to complete.

It asks for the number of people living in the residence; additional people who may be there on April 1; whether they own or rent the residence; the telephone number; the name, sex and date of birth of residents; whether they're Hispanic; their race; and whether they sometimes live somewhere else.

Groves said that sending back the questionnaire by mail can save the government big money.

"It costs the government just 42 cents for a postage-paid envelope when a household mails back the form. It costs $57 to send a census taker door-to-door to follow up with each household that fails to respond."

Todd Hansen, Salt Lake local census office manager, said about 1 million homes in Utah, or 91 percent of them, will receive census forms by mail this week. The other 9 percent — mostly in rural areas where households lack city-style postal addresses — are having forms delivered by hand.

The U.S. Constitution orders a census every 10 years, and this is the 23rd that has occurred. The estimated cost for the 2010 Census — covering efforts to prepare and follow up, between 2001 and 2013 — is $14.5 billion. Groves said it is the only civic event that involves every person in the country.

Results are used to decide how many seats each state receives in the U.S. House of Representatives — and to redraw state and local representation boundaries. The results also are used to divide government funds that are distributed in formulas based largely on population.

The federal government spent $133 million on advertising campaigns seeking to boost participation in the census, which comes to about $1 per household.

The Census Bureau printed 360 million questionnaires. If they were stacked on top of each other, they would be about 29 miles high, or five times higher than Mount Everest, according to the Census Bureau.

The paper used to print the questionnaires weighed 11.6 million pounds, and the printing used more than 295,000 pounds of ink. If stretched end to end, the forms would circle the globe three times.

Hansen said some Utahns may have questions about how they should count LDS missionaries in their families on the forms.