For many systems -- education, justice, political -- there is no clear consensus about how to engage the public. All of these entities both want to engage the public, and simultaneously see the public as an impediment to decision-making. When I was an elected official, some of my colleagues felt that public participation was an impediment to decision-making, and that we were elected to make these decisions. This juxtaposition encapsulates the challenge of community engagement -- the desire to do so, and the lack of process to do so effectively.

Many boards and commissions I have served on have shared the common challenge of how to engage community meaningfully and effectively. We see these struggles in the way that the University of Colorado, our school districts, and the City of Boulder and Boulder County communicate with their clientele: students, families, citizens. Ineffective communication between the system and its clients has led repeatedly to a lack of progress.

We know that we have to create a community process to share information, ideas, and initiatives. The question remains: how? Many of the processes I have observed are what I call pseudo-community engagement. They allow us to say we held a public process, yet we did not always use the information we gathered from the public effectively.

Unfortunately, by the time the community is engaged, it is reacting to a decision already made about a problem already "solved" by decision-makers, who saw a problem, created a solution, and then went to the community to get feedback on the solution. Reacting to a solution and being part of the problem-solving process are much different conversations.

This too-late engagement leads to anger in the community -- feeling of having been fooled by a decision already underway. Community members expect our policy-makers to take care of us and do the right thing. When we realize that decisions made may impact us negatively, we find ourselves baffled, resentful.

Recently, members of our city leaders are calling for meaningful change in how we engage our community. City Councilwoman Suzy Ageton's recent comments about budget cuts exemplified this when she referred to our last economic downturn and budget cuts in Boulder. Ageton referred to a period between 2001 and 2004 when the city leaders tried to hide the cuts from the public, instead of engaging the community in the "hard decision-making..." She went on to pre-pave the possibility of an improved approach, saying, "I want us to engage the community, to talk about what we're doing and why we're doing it."

I too, want us to engage the community in the difficult business of change and progress. Many of us are talking about how to get more involved with the survival of our country and planet. Let's talk as passionately about our local community. It's time to work together to create solutions that are impactful and sustainable for us and our children. I urge each of us to take a first step today, this week. Find a place to become involved, put it on your calendar, and go. As a great leader recently said, "We are the change we've been waiting for." Now is the time and we are the ones to create changes in our community engagement process.

E-mail Bill de la Cruz at conversationson@gmail.com.�