Building a municipal communications department from scratch

The situation

Municipal communications is the hardest audience problem in the business. You are speaking to elected officials, regional media, department heads, and residents who did not ask to hear from you — all at the same time, in the same message, with a public meeting record attached.

When I arrived there was no communications department to inherit. What existed was reactive by necessity: responding to inquiries rather than shaping the Town's own narrative. Departments each spoke in their own voice. The website was dated. And the story being told about the Town's work was being written by other people.

So we built the department. Not a reorganization — a new office, standing up its first standards, its first publications, and its first real relationships with the press. Every piece of it was a team effort, and most of it did not exist in any form before we made it.

“We built a proactive communications operation from the ground up — consistent media relationships, content that surfaced the human impact of the work, and a message architecture leadership could use across every channel.”

What we built

Three pieces did the most to change how the Town sounded and how residents experienced it: the website overhaul, the quarterly newsletter, and the brand standards. Everything else grew out of those.

• A rebuilt website. The complete overhaul and redesign of the Town website — vendor selection and vendor management through content, design, functionality, and continuous improvement. The front door residents actually use, modernized end to end.
• In Bloom, a quarterly newsletter. A 16-page publication mailed to every household and business in Bloomfield, with a letter from the Town Manager and sections from each department. It gave the Town a predictable, physical way to reach residents who never visit a website or a meeting.
• Town-wide brand standards. A branding and style guide created and adopted across all departments — logo use, color, typography, and voice — written for internal staff to follow, so a parks flyer and a police advisory finally read like the same government.
• A real digital channel mix. Digital communications strategy across the website, social media, email, and an interactive digital newsletter reaching more than 10,000 households and businesses — sustaining engagement under real budget constraints.
• Plain-language civic reporting. Council Connection took Town Council decisions and translated them into something residents could read in two minutes and actually understand.
• The Town's first annual report. A 44-page FY22–23 report pulling every department into one narrative about what the Town did with the year.
• Internal communications. The Monthly Tea, an employee newsletter built to make municipal staff feel like part of one organization rather than a dozen separate ones.
• An executive voice. Served as lead writer and editor for executive communications, public messages, publications, and press materials on behalf of the Town Manager and senior leadership.
• A press operation. Built and maintained relationships with local and regional media through proactive public relations, press releases, and story development as the Town's Public Information Officer.

The work itself

These are the actual documents — written, edited, designed, or directed as part of standing up the office.

More releases and publications are in the work samples library.

Crisis & emergency communications

Provided strategic communications counsel on institutional messaging, public relations, and crisis and emergency communications — coordinating rapid, accurate messaging with public safety and health partners when the timeline was measured in minutes rather than news cycles.

The approach is proactive first: build the infrastructure, the relationships, and the playbooks before a crisis hits. When one arrives, the priorities are speed, accuracy, and empathy — stay close to leadership, coordinate messaging across every channel, and never let a vacuum form.

Outcomes

What transfers

Government communications means managing elected officials, media, and skeptical residents simultaneously. That is the same dynamic as managing authorizers, legislators, families, and a community — or a board, a donor base, a press corps, and a campus. The muscle is identical: build credibility with audiences who have every reason to be wary, and keep it consistent when the pressure changes.