Each year, the Salt Lake City Council adopts a multibillion-dollar city budget that shapes nearly every aspect of local life—from affordable housing and public safety to green spaces and transportation. But despite its significance, few residents engage with the process or understand how to participate.

In early 2025, I reviewed three years of performance data to better understand gaps in public awareness, education and engagement. Website bounce rates were high during budget months (peaking at 75% in 2024), and “budget” emails had strong open rates but inconsistent click-throughs. Engagement often came from a small group of repeat participants.

Planning

The Fiscal Year 2025-26 (FY26) Budget Engagement campaign was designed to:

• Increase awareness and understanding of the City’s budget.
• Improve accessibility through plain language and multilingual outreach.
• Encourage public feedback and participation in hearings and budget deliberations.
• Make complex financial topics digestible and relevant to daily life.

Key Objectives

• Raise public visibility of the budget process across platforms.
• Increase public participation in hearings and budget deliberations.
• Increase engagement (measured by click-through rates, comments, attendance).
• Ensure residents from across the city had equitable access to information.

Our target audiences included Salt Lake City residents, property and business owners, employees, historically underserved communities, and community and media partners. Messaging focused on what’s in it for them—highlighting how budget choices impact everyday services like transit, street repairs, parks and safety.

Implementation

From March to July 2025, the Council communications team launched a multi-channel engagement strategy to reach our key objectives.

Public Participation Tools

• Promoted multiple comment options (Zoom, in-person, email, voicemail, webform).
• Provided a “Budget 101” presentation during a community council meeting.
• Created and maintained a landing page (with a memorable shortlink: tinyurl.com/SLCFY26) as the central hub for information, resources, and key dates.
• Conducted a “Budget Priorities” survey to gather feedback/insights to improve outreach.

Creative Assets

Email Campaigns

• Weekly emails in English and Spanish with budget discussion recaps, direct links to materials, agenda previews and hearing dates.
• Monthly emails sent to community leaders with resources, key dates and decisions.

Social Media Campaigns

All communications used plain language, alt text for images and inclusive phrasing. Budget graphics and videos were created in-house with Canva, Adobe Creative Suite and CapCut.

Evaluation

The FY26 budget campaign showed that when we meet people where they are and speak plainly, they show up, speak out and get involved. In a challenging fiscal year marked by inflation and structural deficits, the we turned the FY26 budget process into a meaningful civic learning experience. Through a blend of education, outreach and storytelling, we helped residents understand how their government allocates resources and how they can help shape those decisions.

Reach & Awareness

• Instagram post reach increased by 38% during budget season (April–June).
• “Budget Soup” video reached 3,000+ views across platforms.
• The average open rate for emails with budget subject lines increased by 34% and the budget list grew by 6% during the campaign.

Engagement

• The FY26 budget landing page had nearly 3,300 page views and more than 1,300 link clicks, primarily from email and social traffic.
• Budget posts had double the average engagement rate compared to non-budget posts.
• Public participation remained steady across both hearings, and we received a total of 73 public comments and 580 survey responses.

Recognition

• Utah PRSA 2025 Golden Spike Awards finalist
• City Cast Salt Lake included our budget website in the list of things they’re grateful for. Listen below or access the full episode.