On Tuesday night, the Gunnison City Council approved the city’s new strategic communications framework, an 80-page document that covers everything from social media posts to email newsletters to logo use.
The document serves as a "living guide" to help the city be more proactive and responsive to its diverse community. It fulfills a specific action item within the City Council’s 2024 Strategic Framework, which prioritized "Public Engagement" and called for a structured plan to foster a better-informed community.
The communications plan has been in the works for years, going back to at least 2018. It was then that Erica Boucher was hired as the city clerk. A portion of her job description was to handle city communications and she recalls a communications plan being something she and her colleagues heard a lot about.
“It’s something we have wanted to have in place for a long time,” Boucher said this week.
Boucher helped further the city’s communications while also handling the normal duties of a clerk. Then, three years ago, the city hired Elise Garcia as its communications officer. One of her main goals was to get a formal communications plan written and approved.
That finally happened Tuesday night.
“We took (the communications plan) to our leadership meeting and during the introductions someone called out that this has been my baby for nine months,” Garcia said with a laugh. “It’s time for this thing to grow up and get out of the house. We’re ready to start using it. We’ve put so much good work into preparing this from a strategic standpoint. We know it’s going to work. We’re going to have a good product.”
The final document was the result of a multi-phase development process involving Slate Communications, a consulting firm hired in July 2025. The process included internal assessments, stakeholder interviews and community outreach meetings to ensure the framework was tailored specifically to Gunnison's character.
No long-term strategy
Boucher said for many years, the city would have periodic Facebook posts, periodic press releases and periodic advertising campaigns. Some of the work was being done, but there was not a long-term strategy. There was no way to judge the effectiveness of what they were doing, either.
A "Discovery Report" included in the framework highlighted that communications were historically fragmented, with individual departments operating in silos. This led to inconsistencies in tone and timing. To fix this, the new framework provides specific "Metrics for Success," including tracking unique website visitors, email open rates and demographic diversity at public events.
Boucher said the plan aims to highlight all the different ways the city plans to reach its residents. They don’t want to only be communicating to the same group of people. The plan will help the city identify more effective methods to reach its youth, its seniors and its Spanish speakers.
“We want to make sure we’re reaching out to all aspects of the community,” Boucher said, “not just reaching out to those who always show up.”
The framework identifies several "hard-to-reach" groups, including the city's 1,900 university students and its growing Spanish-speaking and immigrant populations. A key priority moving forward is the development of a formal language access policy to ensure residents can participate in local government regardless of their native language. Additionally, the city is researching text-based communication apps, such as WhatsApp, after hearing community feedback expressing a desire for timely, direct updates.
While the communications plan is detailed and comprehensive, it’s not meant to be rigid.
“It can adapt over time,” Garcia said. “We’re going to go out and implement new things and ask, ‘How is this working?’”
Often times, every department across the city has done its own communications and outreach work. When that happens, there can be a lack of consistency and no strong unifying message, they said.
Part of this framework is to bring all of that work under one umbrella – Garcia’s. That will lead to consistent, accountable and transparent communication.
Staff purposefully changed the title from "Plan" to "Framework" because a framework serves as a supporting structure that allows the city to listen, learn and adapt over time. Garcia, in her role as communications officer, will now act as a "strategic filter," translating technical departmental information into clear, community-facing messages.
Goals
The plan outlines a number of goals that the city hopes to complete in 2026.
Those goals are as follows:
If all of these goals can be accomplished, residents will have a better understanding of what the city is doing for its residents, Boucher and Garcia said.
“I think the goal would be that there is more depth and more awareness and understanding across our residents in general about the role of the city,” Boucher said. “How we’re functioning, What our operations are. The relationship between their taxes and what the result is.”
Too often, Boucher and Garcia hear from residents that they don’t know what the city really does. They’re working hard to show Gunnison residents what it is that the city is doing.
Take, for example, the recent tax reallocation that dedicates more funding to fix city streets.
That work is now ongoing and Garcia plans to tell that story in as many places as possible so residents can see their tax dollars at work on those street repairs.
The framework introduces "data-driven storytelling" as a tactic, using infographics and tools like ClearGov to explain the city's annual budget and complex capital projects in plain language. This approach is intended to build trust by showing the "why" behind decisions and the tangible outcomes of city spending.
At the end of the day, Garcia and Boucher simply hope that the plan helps the city improve at communications with its residents.
“Local government is really powerful when it’s done well and when there are good people doing it,” Garcia said. “We want people to feel like there’s a two-way relationship between them and their government.”
Chad Richardson can be reached at crichardson@orourkemediagroup.com.
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