It’s finally here.

After months of anticipation, the 10-question 2010 Census Form began arriving in DeKalb County residential mailboxes on Wednesday.

The forms are among 120 million questionnaries the U.S. Census office is mailing this month as it undertakes its 10-year count of every adult and child living in the United States.

Gil Turman, president of the South DeKalb Neighborhoods Coalition, said his form arrived on Wednesday.

“I opened it and browsed it and put it aside for later,” he said Thursday. “I will sent it back by April 1.”

George Grandy Jr., director the Census Atlanta region, says residents don’t have to wait until April 1 to fill out and return the form.

“It is important that we fill out that form and return it immediately,” he said. “If we don’t fill it out, we don’t exist.”

Turman said he has always participated in the census and understands how critical it is.

“There needs to be a count to provide services to people,” he said. “It is important for representation and for disbursements of federal resources.”

The hard-to-miss envelop bearing the form reminded recipients that “your response is required by law.”

The Lintons in Decatur said they are filling it out and sending it back. “If you don’t they will come to your house,” Cynthia Linton said. “I don’t want that.”

The census reports are used to determine how more than $445 billion in federal funds – for everything from schools to roads to senior centers – are distributed to state, local, and tribal governments over the next decade.

It also affects representation in Congress, and in the Electoral College that picks the president.

The 10 questions on the 2010 form make it the shortest census form in U.S. history. Census officials say it will take just 10 minutes to fill out.

It consists of questions about the number of people living in your home and some demographic information about them.

To create awareness about the form’s arrival, census officials unveiled a 20-foot replica of the form on Peachtree Street at Underground Atlanta on Monday.

Atlanta is one of 13 cities nationwide displaying the giant form. At the event, representatives from a number of civic, community and fraternal organizations stressed the importance of everyone filling out and returning their forms.

Helen Butler, executive director of the Coalition for People’s Agency and the Count Me Black Complete Count Committee, said everyone in the household, including the baby, should be counted.

“If someone is going to be back at your house on April 1, if they are in prison or some of your family is homeless, you need to make sure they get counted,” she said.

Janice Mathis, director of the Rainbow PUSH Atlanta office, said that young people should not use the census as a form of protest against what they see in the public sphere.

“If you want to protest, join us in the streets, join us on a picket,” she said. “Fill out your census form. Don’t use abstaining from filling out your census form as a way of expressing your disappointment. This is a way to get resources for your community.”

“For brothers and sisters who are incarcerated. It is a way to count them in the communities they are from, and not the communities they are exported to.”

The DeKalb Complete Count committee has been working for months to inspire residents to fill out the form.

In the 2000 Census, only 67 percent of U.S. residents responded, resulting in an estimated undercount of more than 3 million people. A recent Price Waterhouse Coopers report estimates that undercounted areas lost about $2,913 in federal funding for every person who wasn’t counted.

On March 13, DeKalb Commissioner Connie Stokes, who heads the county’s Count Committee, and CEO Burrell Ellis led the county’s first Census Caravans through portions of Decatur’s “hard-to-count” neighborhoods.

At stops along the way, they handed out information about the census and encouraged residents to fill out and return the forms.

Stokes says everyone needs to be counted whether they are living with relatives or friends temporarily, and regardless of their immigration status.

“Census responses are completely confidential and protected by the strongest national privacy laws on the books,” she said.

The Census Caravan is headed to Doraville and Chamblee on March 20. It returns to Decatur, Lithonia and Stone Mountain on March 27.

A number of neighborhood groups are also planning Census Nights, festivals and block parties on March 25 to motivate residents to complete and return their forms. Turman said that the SDNC will be sending out reminders to fill out and return their forms to individuals and groups in its database next week.