Lafayette highlights new communications director, outlines engagement strategy

Aaron Frasier, the city’s newly hired communications director, was introduced to the council May 26 as staff outlined a refreshed approach to Lafayette’s communications and engagement work. Frasier, presented by the deputy city manager as a Lafayette resident with more than 20 years of communications experience at CU Boulder, begins with a stated focus on aligning channels, increasing accessibility and improving how the city listens to residents.

The communications team emphasized the city website as the “official source of truth” for agendas, meeting minutes, news alerts and public records. Communications manager Natalie Miller told the council the department handled roughly 809 service requests in 2025 and recorded 1.6 million page views on the city site, with top traffic to the library, news alerts and recreation pages. Staff said they route incoming issues through two primary buckets — a request tracker for service/operations issues and a contact-us workflow for broader inquiries — and that both are monitored daily.

Staff reviewed the channels the city uses: Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Nextdoor and YouTube, and described efforts to improve accessibility by captioning videos and supporting multilingual materials. Sebastian, who leads Spanish-language outreach, described a dedicated Spanish Instagram channel that focuses on original culturally relevant content rather than verbatim translations. He said the Spanish channel is organized around community highlights, educational content, cultural celebration and interactive initiatives to meet residents “where they are.”

Council members sought clarity about whether the website is easy to use, how the city evaluates success and how to reach underrepresented groups such as renters and Spanish speakers. Councelor Jensen urged staff to gather qualitative measures of ease-of-use to complement existing metrics; staff agreed to pursue usability testing and a communications audit. Several members recommended cultivating targeted contact lists for renters and using trusted cultural brokers and community partners to increase Spanish-language engagement.

On emergency communications, staff said Lafayette Alert (the city’s opt-in alert system) remains the most effective tool for time-sensitive notifications, supplemented by department posts when relevant. Councilors also asked staff to monitor local social platforms for misinformation; staff said they actively monitor community conversations and will post corrections and consolidated resources — for example, an updated cemetery information page created recently to gather related materials in one place.

Staff described next steps including onboarding the new director, auditing website and outreach effectiveness, piloting new tools and expanding Lafayette Listens with project-specific hubs to make development-review information easier to find. The presentation concluded with council agreement to continue refining goals and measurement for campaign-level outreach.