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City presents 'Climate Smart Sonoma' public information campaign to commission
Summary
City Public Information Officer Sarah Tracy presented 'Climate Smart Sonoma,' a three-month cross-department public information campaign to connect residents to city climate actions; commissioners urged clearer links to the commission's climate strategy and to hazard-mitigation planning.
Sarah Tracy, the City of Sonoma’s public information officer, told the Climate Action Commission on Nov. 4 that the city has launched a short-term public information campaign called Climate Smart Sonoma to aggregate and amplify existing climate and resilience work across departments.
Tracy said the campaign, born from a mayoral declaration naming 2025 the year of Climate Smart Sonoma, is intended to consolidate city climate messages — via the city website (sonomacity.org), newsletters, and social media — rather than replace existing program pages. “This is a 3 month campaign, built on smart goals,” Tracy said, noting the campaign was one month in at the time of the presentation and that the website and channels would remain available afterward.
The campaign is lightweight financially — staff said most work is handled in-house and the city does not have a separate marketing budget — but aims to make it easier for residents to find and act on topics such as composting, reuse, the hazard mitigation plan update, and seasonal messaging. Tracy described the recent hazard mitigation plan revision approach as integrating climate impacts across hazards instead of treating climate as a separate hazard, and she encouraged commissioners to attend a public meeting on the county-led FEMA plan.
Commissioners pressed Tracy on practical questions about the campaign’s scope and ownership. Commissioner Tom asked whether the campaign aims to simply “assure compliance” with regulations or to go beyond compliance to lead in climate policy; several commissioners urged language and campaign framing that reflect local climate leadership and the city’s 2030 net‑zero ambitions. Commissioners also discussed whether the campaign’s logo and mark are city-owned; Tracy said the logo was produced in-house and that there is no trademark but the city is open to use by partners.
The commission recommended mapping the campaign to the commission’s ongoing climate strategy work, adding clearer references to transportation and electrification work where relevant, and aligning longer-term communications with the general plan update. The Education & Outreach ad hoc and staff were asked to refine the Climate Smart Sonoma messaging and bring revisions back to the commission.
