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Office Overview
The Communications and Public Engagement team supports the City by ensuring residents, stakeholders, and staff are informed, heard, and able to shape decisions that impact their daily lives.
We serve as a strategic partner to departments by supporting engagement and communication early in the process, not after decisions are made.
This Platform
This platform is the City’s central hub for how we connect, engage, and communicate with our community.
It brings consistency to how projects are shared, how input is gathered, and how decisions are communicated across departments.
How we support Your Work
The Communications and Public Engagement team is structured to support citywide strategy, participatory engagement, public information, multimedia storytelling, and emergency communications.
Engage early to align approach, improve outcomes, and strengthen project delivery.
Staff
The team serves as both a strategic partner and an internal service provider, supporting departments while advancing consistent, citywide standards for communication and engagement.
- Supports strategic leadership and coordination across departments
- Leads and advances public engagement strategy and participatory processes
- Maintains strong community presence and relationships
- Helps departments select and use appropriate engagement tools
- Supports capacity building across the organization
- Designs and implements engagement activities
- Coordinates meetings, workshops, and feedback collection
- Ensures engagement supports accessibility and broad community participation
- Leads visual storytelling and multimedia strategy
- Oversees branding and creative standards
- Supervises multimedia production and coordination
- Supports day to day multimedia production
- Assists departments with visual content aligned to priorities
- Supports day to day multimedia production
- Assists departments with visual content aligned to priorities
- Leads public safety and emergency communications
- Coordinates with Police, Fire, Emergency Management, and leadership
- Ensures timely and trusted information during incidents
Ose Akinlotan
Your Assistant Director leads the development of a citywide approach to communications and public engagement that centers connection, builds trust, and improves how decisions are made and delivered.
Her work focuses on building connection as civic infrastructure so residents and staff feel informed, respected, and able to shape outcomes together.
To build connection as civic infrastructure by ensuring communication and engagement are clear, inclusive, and directly tied to decision making.
This supports a just transition where all communities are meaningfully included in shaping outcomes.
We begin by understanding who is impacted and how before designing engagement or communication.
This is not additional work.
This is how we reduce friction, improve clarity, and support better project delivery.
To build connection as civic infrastructure by ensuring communication and engagement are clear, inclusive, and directly tied to decision making, grounded in Just Communities principles that center fairness, shared power, and meaningful participation.
- Connect - Understand who is impacted and what we need to learn
- Engage - Right size participation based on impact
- Communicate - Provide clear and consistent information
- Follow Up - Share what was heard, what changed, and what comes next
Projects should be able to answer:
- Will this improve the resident experience
- Does this advance more than one City priority
- Does this support clear prioritization of work
- Who is impacted and how
- What input will shape this decision
- How will outcomes be communicated clearly
- We help:
- reduce confusion and complaints
- improve clarity and consistency
- design engagement that matches project impact
- align work across departments
Listening and Alignment
- internal department listening and audit
- external listening with neighborhoods and community partners
- review of tools and current approach
- identify gaps and duplication
Expansion and Standardization
- expand engagement across all neighborhoods
- standardize project approach
- demonstrate how input informs decisions
- improve coordination across departments
Example Projects
West Main Utilities Project
The replacement of aging gas and water distribution infrastructure along the West Main Street corridor.
Neighborhood Development Services
Neighborhood Development Services
Housing
Overview of the housing division, goals, projects and initiatives.
Rose Hill Drive Corridor Improvements (Restriping)
Making Rose Hill Drive safer and easier to use for walking, biking, riding the bus, and driving.
Ose Akinlotan
Assistant Director
Assistant Director
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