In my experience, people will be engaged if you engage them. Typically what happens in these scenarios is somebody gets a grant and decides to do something, and they put a public posting in the janitors closet in the women's room in the city hall basement.

My city is doing a refining effort where they publicly over faux-communicate. There's lots of meetings with brainstorming, fancy pictures, etc. Than a preliminary document dump written in jargon. Then, days before the decisions get made, there's a Friday night drop with the "decisions".

Then people find out at the last second if they are lucky. At that point all decisions are made. Partial public financing is typically lined up. The only way to effectively get any voice is to rally around some bullshit regulatory point.