“I got invited to go. When you’re talking about it, it sounds good,” he said. “But when it comes down to it...” he shrugged, implying that he couldn’t be bothered.

Here’s the problem with this kind of civic engagement: Spending public money is a serious business, and serious business can often be incredibly boring.

This was all too evident at the meeting I attended in late October, at which the Steering Committee talked about how the past year had worked and how the process should go forward in the future.

The meeting fell on the second-to-last night of the World Series, when the region’s beloved San Francisco Giants could have clinched the series. The meeting was, at times, one of the most boring things I’ve ever experienced. The facilitator, from the Participatory Budgeting Project, asked people to introduce themselves and say where they’d most want to be at that very moment. Very few said they actually wanted to be there.

“I want to start by talking about what a rule book is,” he said. “Does anyone know what a rule book is?” He sounded much like the dry economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

But the very flatness of the meeting was in itself impressive: After all, here were all these people of different ages and ethnic groups, who could be home watching their local baseball team in the World Series, who were instead talking about rules and voting procedure. And not only that, they were passionate about it.

There were some raised tempers in the room, especially about the idea that city staff were trying to take over the process. It surprised me a little: They didn’t want fewer tedious tasks, they wanted more of them, and felt empowered that they had been trusted to do them.

“It’s been staff-driven. It’s not participatory. How can you call it participatory when we’re not involved?” one man, wearing a Giants tie and with one earbud in listening to the game, protested to the man running the meeting.

Another woman, Kim Thomas, was angry about the city council’s interference.

“It’s a complete violation of the whole idea of democracy—it's called dictatorship,” she said, and a few other people nodded their heads.

The meeting continued on into the night, with breaks for Chinese food, supplied by the city. There were nearly 20 people seated around the tables, and they stayed there for hours, breaking into small groups for discussions and then reconvening around folding tables in the fluorescent lighting of the meeting room in the basement of the library.

Across a small plaza, by contrast, the city council was holding a meeting. Eight elected officials sat on leather chairs on an elevated platform, reading a proclamation about Veterans Day and an HIV-testing program chock full of words like "whereas" and "hereby."

That meeting began with a few dozen residents sitting in the audience, but they merely watched as the elected officials on the platform conducted their business. And then the lights dimmed and a man started a PowerPoint presentation about rebuilding Vallejo’s downtown. Those watching didn't seem too engaged. One by one, Vallejoans snuck out. There was a baseball game on, after all.

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