By DENI LUNA

It comes but once a decade and it's only days away.

Census 2000 gets underway this month. During the second week of March, advance letters will be mailed to every household that census forms will be arriving soon. You may request census forms in five languages other than English (Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Tagalog) by responding to the advance letter.

Later this month, census forms will be delivered to all households by mail. Most homes will receive the short census form. One in six households will receive a long form. Those who need assistance completing the census form can receive help at various neighborhood centers, churches, community based organizations and other locations.

Census takers will visit households that have not completed and mailed back the form from April through June. By the end of the year, a new population count will be tabulated, for apportionment of the House of Representatives.

To encourage full participation in Census 2000, the City of Seattle and the Census Bureau have launched a multi-cultural and multi-lingual outreach campaign. In addition, the Census Bureau is hiring thousands of workers now through April, many of them bilingual.

The City of Seattle will open Complete Count Assistance Centers, in coordination with community volunteers. Other planned City efforts range from inserts in utility bills to outreach at homeless shelters. "We couldn't get out the word adequately without hundreds of volunteers, working in our communities," said Mayor Paul Schell. ,p> In the 1990 Census, more than 12,000 people were missed in Seattle. Thirty percent of those undercounted in Seattle were children. Due to that undercount, Seattle has lost up to 14 million dollars in federal funding each year.

"We could have hired 144 more teachers or opened seven more schools in Seattle," said Mayor Schell. We could have built more roads, more housing for our homeless, more food for our hungry. For ethnic communities, the undercount has meant everything from less bilingual voting assistance, to less job training, to less money for civil rights enforcement," added Schell.

Nationally, the accuracy of the Census worsened in 1990. The 1990 Census missed 5 percent of persons of Hispanic origin, 4.4 percent of African Americans, 12.2 percent of American Indians on reservations, and 2.3 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The average undercount nationwide was 1.6 percent.

Ethnic groups will be undercounted for many reasons. The majority of the Asian Pacific Islander population is now foreign-born and not all may be familiar with the Census. Refugees may carry issues from their former countries. For example, there are some Ethiopians who fear the Census because of Communist efforts to enumerate households in their homeland.

Some refugees may carry a long-time distrust of government. Others fear deportation, if perhaps they have overstayed their visas. Others may not want to answer questions dealing with family income. All of these people need to know that Census answers are confidential.

At this time, bilingual enumerators are still needed, as well as clerical support in the eight Local Census Offices in Puget Sound. For hiring information, please call the Census Recruiting Office at 220-4741.