Believe it or not, BART is spending $800,000 to come up with a definition of just what constitutes a "major service change."

Most of us would simply reach for a dictionary, but BART has to make the feds happy, and that means a three-month process that includes:

-- Holding 35 community meetings.

-- Hiring a small army of translators to staff the meetings.

-- Bringing in a crew of six-figure consultants to manage the meetings and issue the obligatory reports.

"We're just trying to cover all our bases," said BART spokesman Linton Johnson.

It all started a few months back when the Federal Transit Administration nixed $70 million in stimulus money that would have helped BART build a people-mover line from the Coliseum Station to Oakland International Airport.

The feds said BART hadn't considered what impact possible higher fares and a "major service change" would have on low-income, minority and limited-English-speaking riders.

The oversight amounted to a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and could jeopardize more than $100 million in future funding for the airport line, plus other projects.

Stunned BART officials decided then and there to follow the feds' guidelines to the letter - and the first stop was to make sure they knew the exact definition of "major service change."

First: 17 public meetings all over the Bay Area to identify the low-income, minority and limited-English-speaking riders they needed to hear from.

That meant hiring a consultant at a cost of about $100,000 to organize the meetings and issue a 28-page "public participation plan."

To make sure everyone was heard, BART had to provide foreign language translators - with a minimum of two for every language spoken.

At one meeting in Richmond, a dozen translators speaking six languages were on hand, at a cost of about $7,200.

Once BART officials decided whom they should talk with, they had to actually talk with them. That meant another 18 community meetings - now under way - at which riders are being asked their opinion of what constitutes a major service change. That means more consultants and yet another report - and another $200,000 in costs.

Toss in room rentals, day care for riders' kids at the meetings, food and other extras, and the final bill is expected to run about $800,000.

Plus, BART is adding at least two full-time staffers to its civil rights department - estimated cost, $200,000-plus - to make sure the transit agency complies with the feds' updated Title VI rules and avoids future derailments.

For the record, if you're wondering what BART does consider the definition of a major service change - tentatively, it's any change in routes that affects 25 percent of its service.

Oops: The San Francisco Police Department dispatched more than half its day shift of beat cops to protect President Obamaduring his recent visit to the city.

How do we know this?

Because the cops mistakenly faxed their hush-hush game plan for protecting the leader of the free world to the Coalition on Homelessness the day before Obama landed.

"One of our volunteers was at the fax machine waiting to send something when it arrived. She picked it up and said, 'Oh, my God,' " said Bob Offer-Westort, civil rights organizer for the coalition.

The seven-page fax included a breakdown of the cops assigned to the president - including 114 uniformed officers, 30 tactical officers, 25 officers from the criminal intelligence unit and 17 cops on motorcycles.

The memo also contained the president's itinerary, locations of the various police staging areas and phone numbers.

"We held onto it," Offer-Westort said. "We didn't want to compromise the security."

"It was an internal error that has since been corrected," said police spokeswoman Lt. Lyn Tomioka.

Power failure: Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spent $45 million blanketing California with TV, radio, newspaper and Web ads supporting Proposition 16, knowing all along it was sinking.

Campaign insiders tell us the idea of requiring two-thirds voter approval for cities to launch their own green power initiatives polled favorably out of the gate - 48 percent to 32 percent.

In March, however, Attorney General Jerry Brown issued the official ballot label - describing Prop. 16 as "imposing" a two-thirds vote requirement.

Support for the initiative flipped to 35 percent "yes" and 40 percent "no."

Despite million of dollars in TV ads, "nothing moved" until the final week, said David Townsend, the chief Prop. 16 consultant.

And even then, not by much.

End game - 52.3 percent "no" to 47.7 percent "yes." And $45 million down the drain.

EXTRA! Catch our blog at www.sfgate.com/matierandross.