MMA webinar covers strategies for communicating municipal budgets

An MMA webinar on March 17 discussed strategies for visually communicating municipal budgets.

The presentation was led by Dave Kartunen, an award-winning broadcast journalist and founder of kartoonEDU, who discussed how municipal leaders can communicate their budgets in a visually compelling and accessible way. KartoonEDU, an MMA featured service, uses custom animation to explain complex concepts and increase community engagement across public institutions.

Kartunen recommended an effective messaging architecture:
• First, identify the shared values that will bring people together
• Define the problem and avoid jargon
• Clearly share the benefits of the presented solution
• End each communication with a call to action

Jayne Wellman, acting town manager in Reading, said statements of shared values were “the foundation for building consensus with our residents” during the town’s past debt exclusion initiatives. Many residents who don’t understand municipal budgets are more engaged in the conversation when they can relate to the unifying statements.

Kartunen shared brief, animated videos, created by kartoonEDU, to illustrate how communities like Wakefield and Reading have explained various topics to residents.

Doug Lyons, the superintendent of schools in Wakefield, said many families are concerned about the issue of revolving funds. By clearly communicating that the use of the funds is guided by state laws and restricted to specific purposes, he said, the “temperature of these conversations comes down.”

Wellman moderated 15 minutes of questions and answers, addressing inquiries regarding how to communicate differences in the use of funds to residents, balancing transparency with information overload, and strategies to drive traffic to municipal websites.

• Numbers to Narrative: How to Visually Communicate Your Municipal Budget presentation (4M PDF)