the wasteful census

I recently received my census paper asking me questions whereby I had to predict who would be living in my apartment on April 1st, whether or not they would be white, black, hispanic, etc. Two days later I received instructions on who to call if I had questions, but it was too late--I had sent out the form and figured it out, guessed how many white, black, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, etcetera would be living in my apartment besides my Asian Indian wife. I cannot imagine the actual cost of this second mailing, but I know it's more than I make in a year--or in a lifetime. Why did they send it separately in the first place? It was just a small paper. Who runs the Census Bureau anyway? I know it's some guy I saw briefly on CNN. Anyway, they are spending billions of our dollars for this nonsense when they could be using it for something that has to be better than that.