Summary:
Like all California cities, the City of Roseville is facing flattening revenues due to changing consumer spending habits and increasing costs. To raise awareness of these issues and understand what our community values most, Roseville initiated an extensive, multi-platform public outreach effort called EngageRoseville.
This project used several platforms including video, graphics, public meetings, our podcast, and digital engagement (online polling and data gathering). Our communications team used the Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) to create the creative assets used in this campaign.
Background Story:
If the City were to maintain its current levels of service while also fully funding its long-term liabilities and deferred maintenance, the General Fund budget would realize a $10+ million structural deficit per year, resulting in a fiscally unsustainable position moving forward.
In tangible terms, that deficit is enough to finance two and a half of the City’s eight firehouses for an entire year. Obviously, closing firehouses is not an option. As a result, that loss of money has to be distributed across the City’s General Fund departments (Police, Fire, and Parks, Recreation & Libraries).
The City has been greatly proactive in our approach to our financial responsibilities. A significant stimulus was the Great Recession of ’08. That event forced the City to redesign how we do business. Most of those changes the City made have been invisible to our citizens; they probably never saw any effect in their lives resulting from those changes.
The current financial challenges are different. There is “no extra meat on the bone.” To proceed responsibly, the citizens must understand the numbers and make tough choices about their lives and the future of the City’s finances.
Creation Process:
To many people, the only thing worse than paying taxes is discussing taxes. Our team had to create an engaging, non-biased discussion, established in fact. Transparency was critical. At the same time, we couldn’t put the audience to sleep. We needed to explore how tax revenues specifically affect our citizens' lives both now and in the future.
A critical issue to consider was our presentation. How do you address a politically and educationally diverse audience about such a significant and potentially divisive topic?
The key to success:
The key factor that led to the success of this campaign was communication. The City Council understood that in order to take the appropriate actions, it would require the input of the entire community. With that task in hand, two key leaders defined the project. They were Public Affairs & Communications Director Megan MacPherson and Public Information Officer Brian Jacobson. Together, they identified the specific scope, objectives, and parameters of this project.
The three primary creative vectors we used included graphics, video, and audio.
Graphics – Graphic Artist Lindsay Duck was challenged with reducing an enormous body of financial data down into easily consumable infographics. She created a series of graphics that each addressed a different aspect of the tax revenue ecosystem. The flyers and postcards she designed were distributed at public counters and city events. Additionally, they were sent to every home in the City. The flyers informed people of ways to learn more about the issues and how to get involved in the project. Lindsay created her work using Adobe’s InDesign and Illustrator.
Video - Video Technician Elyjah Wilbur broadcast many hours of live community meetings and documented the impact of those discussions on the community. Elyjah, along with our podcast producer, shot and recorded the interviews needed for this project. From these interviews, he crafted the video podcasts using the tools of the Adobe Creative Cloud. The archive of this work can found at the EngageRoseville YouTube page. For those features, Elyjah used Adobe’s Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Photoshop.
Audio – Ken Bodine, our podcast producer, was tasked with educating the public with in-depth discussions. Experts described in detail the City’s finances and how they relate to our citizens’ lives. Ken worked with Elyjah to create the interviews for this project. The project podcasts are available on multiple platforms including iTunes and Google Play. His tool of choice was Adobe Audition.
Specific results from this project:
On April 4, 2018, the final results of this effort were presented to City Council. At its June 6 meeting, the City Council unanimously approved placing a half-cent general sales tax measure on the November 2018 ballot. If passed by the voters, the measure would generate an estimated $18.4 million annually.
The City management feels that the Public Affairs and Communications Department greatly surpassed the expectations of this assignment to engage the community in this critical discussion. In fact, the Public Affairs and Communications Department was recognized with the 2018 City Manager’s Award for the EngageRoseville project.
The project’s dedicated website, EngageRoseville.com, presented all of the information gathered and produced during this effort. We provided complete transparency, offering links to all of the materials, broadcasts, podcasts, polling sites, presentations, meeting minutes, and survey results.
The demonstrated community awareness and engagement exceeded our expectations and guided the creation of the FY2019 budget. The project results indicate the community prefers maintaining service levels by increasing revenues instead of cutting or eliminating services.
Community members also demonstrated a greater understanding of our diverse budget challenges and options. Through these efforts, the City staff now possesses a more refined knowledge of our community’s values and can better address hot-button issues. The use of various Adobe CC products was critical in the creation of the EngageRoseville mechanism.
Metrics:
The numbers generated by the EngageRoseville project demonstrate our community’s interaction with our media efforts:
- 60,000 direct-mail pieces with graphics explaining budget issues and ways to get involved were sent to every single residence in the City.
-2,200 downloads of podcasts (almost 600 hours of downloads)
-12,770 Facebook video views
-1,179 YouTube video views
-2,218 views on YouTube Live of Community Priorities Advisory Committee meetings
Graphic Artist Lindsay Duck crafted an amazing set of visuals that explained a diverse body of numerical information.
Video Technician Elyjah Wilbur crafted a number of videos that captured the discussions among the key stakeholders - our residents and the senior staff at the City.
Podcast Producer Ken Bodine created a series of podcasts that provided insight to the subtleties of these complicated issues.
