AWC

Communicating Your Budget
to Your Citizens

An AWC Toolkit

This toolkit includes a series of checklists, articles and templates that cities of all sizes can use to communicate more effectively with their citizens. Use in your newsletters, on your website and give to your local media to explain issues like budget, or street maintenance, or the impacts of initiatives and the value of essential city services. 

What's Below:

  • Reach Out to Your Citizens
  • Connect with Your Media
  • Communicate Your Budget Info
  • Show Your Tax Dollars at Work


Reach Out to Your Citizens

As budgets tighten and your choices become more difficult, it's important to ask your citizens what they think.

This section also includes some public outreach tools, and a case study of a city budget outreach that received an AWC Municipal Achievement award.


Connect with Your Media

The following checklists give you practical information for working effectively with your local media.


Communicate Your Budget Info

This section includes samples from citizen newsletters, web pages, special budget reports, PowerPoint presentation to citizens, and op-ed piece for a local paper.


Show Your Tax Dollars at Work

The templates in this section are for you to use with your own information. The numbers and examples give you some ideas for communicating your city's budget numbers.

AWC can either send you our original files OR you can send us your information and we'll prepare a camera-ready copy for you to use. To order a camera-ready copy, please call Suzy Ziesemer at (360) 753-4137 x108 or email her at suzyz@awcnet.org.

 

9/17/08

 

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