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Council hears communications plan: intranet, LaceyWorks service requests, Lacey Weekly and language access
Summary
Communications staff reviewed tools launched in the last year — intranet, LaceyWorks 311 system, Lacey Weekly newsletter, expanded social media, Lacey TV and a language access plan — and outlined next steps including a branding guide and a community survey.
City communications staff presented an update April 22 on internal and external communications initiatives, including an employee intranet, the LaceyWorks service‑request system, a new weekly newsletter (Lacey Weekly), expansion of social media and broadcast channels, and an in‑progress language‑access plan.
Donna, Jenny, John Koch and intern Peyton walked council through tools and usage statistics. Staff said the intranet is being used to centralize templates, policies and department pages to improve cross‑departmental access to documents. Jenny reported that LaceyWorks — the city’s community request management system launched March 11, 2024 — handled several hundred requests in its first year and is helping staff document response history and close out requests faster.
Peyton (communications intern) reviewed social‑media audience growth: Facebook had about 16,250 followers, X about 5,260, YouTube around 3,500, Instagram 3,460 and LinkedIn 1,560. Staff reported growth metrics (e.g., follower and reach increases year‑over‑year and month‑over‑month) and said posts that show construction progress, road closures, and human‑interest features receive higher engagement.
John Koch summarized Lacey TV operations (cable channel, Roku/Fire apps and HD streaming), noting meeting replays, History Talks programming and a year of on‑demand views across platforms. Communications staff also described website traffic (cityoflacey.org had roughly 781,000 page views in 2024, utility billing and home page among top destinations) and said the parks pages skew more heavily mobile in device usage.
Veronica presented the language access work: staff has drafted a language access plan, posters in multiple languages including an “I speak” poster, pocket cards and an interpreter‑request card for staff. The city plans to extend existing LanguageLine services by deploying a video‑interpretation app on staff mobile devices (including ASL capability) to accelerate access in the field. Staff said the city will post a language‑access complaint form and an equityandinclusion@cwc.org inbox to collect concerns.
Communications staff outlined next steps: finalize a branding and style guide, refresh the website home page, increase promotion of Lacey Weekly (launched last fall with ~400 subscribers), explore additional outreach tools, and complete an externally conducted community survey (Polco). The survey will be administered via postcards with QR codes; staff expects Polco to target about 3,000 completed responses and will offer survey pages in English, Spanish and Korean. Staff said the open participation portion of the survey will allow additional residents outside the random draw to participate.
Council members asked about survey length and outreach; staff said Polco uses standard question sets for comparability and will employ its outreach methods to reach the response target. Council also discussed a potential community ambassador program — staff said the Commission on Equity has that on its work plan and a recommendation to council is expected later this year.
Staff emphasized that the communications tools are intended to make city services more accessible and to coordinate messaging across departments, and they invited council feedback on branding and outreach priorities.
