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Subcommittee outlines outreach push: explainer videos, town office hours and a visibility dashboard
Summary
Franklin’s Communications Subcommittee discussed using short explainer videos, meeting recaps, office hours, neighborhood walks and a public tracking dashboard to connect residents with town information and reduce confusion about taxation, development and budgets.
The Franklin Communications Subcommittee spent significant time discussing tactics to improve resident understanding of town decisions, proposing a mix of short explainer videos, meeting recaps, expanded office hours, neighborhood listening sessions and a public-facing dashboard to track town priorities and project status.
Liz, the communications director, proposed a menu of outreach tools — 30- to 60-second explainer clips, 1–5 minute meeting recaps, a council podcast or conversation series, council office hours at libraries or the food pantry, quarterly volunteer shifts and a public interactive goal-tracking dashboard. Members suggested priority topics for short explainer clips, including Proposition 2½, split tax-rate mechanics and how assessments affect individual bills, because residents commonly misunderstand why property tax bills can rise more than 2.5%.
Several members emphasized the importance of pointing residents to existing resources on the town website (agendas, packets and planning-board materials) and using Franklin TV and Franklin Matters to help produce short vignettes. Steve Sherlock of Franklin Matters volunteered technical advice and recommended checking threads before replying to online comments.
The subcommittee also discussed capacity constraints and recommended coordinating with department heads and Franklin TV so staff bandwidth is respected. The group agreed to prioritize a small set of explainer topics and to pilot one or two short videos tied to upcoming workshops (the Board of Assessors workshop on new growth was cited as a possible source of explainer material).
