Latest / Modern Gov Matters / "Find Your Fluffle": Building Gov Comms Relationships with Kara Raftery
Transcript
- Sarah Loyd: Welcome back to Modern Gov Matters presented by CivAll powered by Social News Desk. I'm Sarah Loyd What do you do when you're a team of one managing communications and HR for a city of 2,400 people that hosts 3.6 million visitors a year? Well, if you're today's guest, you time block your calendar, keep a 200 to-do list, ⁓ and find your fluffle. Kara Raftery is the communications and HR manager and designated public information officer for the city of Leavenworth, Washington. Kara, welcome to Modern Matters. Kara Raftery: Thanks so much for having me, Sarah. I'm excited to talk to you today. Sarah Loyd: So first of all, I want to ask you about what your day actually looks like because what you told me before the podcast was the most delightfully chaotic thing I've read in a while. So for people who haven't heard it yet, give us real picture. What is a so-called normal day look like for you? Kara Raftery: Well, every day is different. And believe the analogy I gave you was if you're familiar with the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, my day is not like that. ⁓ You don't wake up to the same thing every day and are able to even to anticipate what's coming next. And I think a good example is just a day. ⁓ Sarah Loyd: Hahaha Kara Raftery: I'm prepping for a meeting at eight for another, hopping to another meeting at eight 30, but I had to come in at seven 30 to prep for the eight 30 meeting. then I hop on a training call, but I have to do it on my cell phone because I have to be offsite that's 45 minutes away. and had to leave that meeting early to get back to another meeting. And then of course, I'm in HR and so things happen, right? And so you have your plan day. And then there's those little hot potatoes that get thrown to you that you have to sort of drop and pivot and manage those little things. and then, you know, a good example this morning is I'm walking into work and I leaned down to pick something and my matcha green tea just explodes all over myself and, um, the sidewalk. so, you know, at seven 30 this morning, I'm cleaning a sidewalk. Uh, so that's, that's my day. Sarah Loyd: ⁓ no! Kara Raftery: So it's great. So the good thing about my job is it's never boring. I love solving problems. So, so as much as it would be nice to sort of anticipate our day, sort of be able to plan, every day is different. I do feel pretty envious of Bill Murray, you know, on that last final scene where he's like, he's doing all the things and saving all the kids and playing the piano. It's like maybe that'll Yeah, that'll be me one day. But ⁓ not quite there yet. Sarah Loyd: Nails everything. Yeah, so I know you mentioned to me you have a 200 item to-do list, which I have to ask, how does that list not just eat you alive? Like how do you make peace with 200 items? Kara Raftery: Well, the list and I, we have a really close relationship, this list and I. I still, as much as Outlook or Notes or Asana or any other program out there, I love pen and paper. So really the list for me is sort of what I like to call sort of a brain dump. it is a joke around City Hall. You know, when people ask, hey, how's that? I'm like, it's the list. this is a great tool for me when I go to my direct supervisor who happens to be our city administrator, is when we talk about workflow and workload. So the list is a really helpful tool to be like, hey, here's all the things that I have on my radar. What's a priority to this week? What do you need me to accomplish? Is there anything that's not on here? And it really helps me be able to... feel successful, right? And so to not feel overwhelmed, because even though I know I have 200 things on this list, maybe I only need to accomplish three to five this week, or maybe I really only need to accomplish one today. I don't know about you, Sarah, but I just get all that feeling when you get to cross something off your list. just, right? Right? It feels so good. Yeah. So, so for me, that's helpful. Sarah Loyd: ⁓ my gosh. It's so good. So let's set the stage a little bit more because I think the context of Leavenworth is something our listeners really need to picture. So you've got a city of 2,400 people, but you guys see 3.6 million visitors a year. So tell me a little bit more about Leavenworth and what makes it unique. Kara Raftery: ⁓ Well, Leavenworth is it's such a fantastic community. So for those that aren't familiar, so Leavenworth, Washington, we're less than 1.5 square miles. We are teeny tiny town and we sit Sarah Loyd: That is teeny tiny. Kara Raftery: Yeah, it is. super small. but we sit right at the base of the Cascade Mountain range and right at the confluence of a river. the town originally was a an old railroad workers town. And then in like the 1960s, 1970s, there was this huge economic downturn. And so basically the whole town was revitalized by this duo who had this, you know, crazy idea to turn this town into a Bavarian themed town, to draw visitors to basically revitalize the downtown. And of course it was hugely successful. So now we are at the Bavarian village. here in Washington. And yeah, we see over 3 million visitors a year. but our resident population is less than 3000. So during those peak times during the year, we have a daytime population of 33,000. So that's a pretty big shift, right? So it's really interesting because from a comms perspective or a small city perspective, it's all about balance. So we really are trying to balance meeting quality of life and services for our residents, our businesses, and our out of town guests. Sarah Loyd: Yeah. ⁓ So you mentioned balance, balancing the needs of residents tourists versus business owners, but you're also balancing communications and HR. I remember talking to you and you're basically half a communications person and half an HR person, but really a whole of each, so you're really two people. ⁓ How do those two worlds collide in your day to day? Kara Raftery: Yeah, well, there's a lot of overlap in some ways, which is really nice, especially when it comes to communications, because HR to me is really about people, right? the way to establish relationships with people is through communication. So that was kind of how I morphed into this role. I started as a communications and special projects manager, which meant whatever anybody could think of that meant special somehow became mine. ⁓ Sarah Loyd: Everything gets to be a little bit special, right? Kara Raftery: Right? Yeah. Yeah. and then as the, as I took on more things and we sort of like dived into sort of the organization, we really need, we really needed to have a formal HR department. So something unique about our city is we've never had a formal HR department and we're just, a big, we're a big small city. So we were growing, we just needed more support. I think again, it's a balancing act and I'm not, I'm not always the best at it. I'm a little bit klutzy. So, and that carries over to my work too. So, ⁓ that's why that time blocking is so important to me is I be able to structure my day or time block moments when I need deep work to focus on an HR project or a comms project. but for me, it's really been about, identifying what's the highest priority need and what's going to have the most impact. at this exact moment. same with communications. It comes down to relationships, connecting with people. So in HR, that's the same with comms is it's just connecting with people. And so really I see my comm side, I'm connecting externally and then my HR I'm connecting internally. So there's a lot of duality between the two. ⁓ so it's been challenging, but really exciting. And honestly, being to not only support my team, but also support my community is really rewarding. I definitely for a team of one who's doing both, I see you out there and if you have questions, call me and we can talk through it though, cause it's definitely not easy, but it's definitely really ⁓ an important job. And I'm honored I get to do that for, for both, for both circles. Sarah Loyd: Yeah, that's great. And I love that you're like, call me. ⁓ You know, that's one thing I love so much about the, you know, government communication, civic engagement community is that you guys are all so willing to talk to each other, you know, talk each other through problems, commiserate, you know, celebrate together. And that kind of brings me to my next question. ⁓ You had mentioned something previous the podcast really stuck with me, ⁓ which was the idea shifting toward more in-person touch points in 2026, because obviously with social media algorithms ⁓ that doesn't just do the work anymore. So tell me a little bit more about that. What's driving that shift for you guys? Kara Raftery: Okay. Yeah, I think in a heavy world, we rely on a lot of these tools that are amazing outreach resources. So, you know, different platforms and your website. But one of the things that we've realized is one, you can't rely on the algorithm ⁓ for a lot of things, because not always reaching the right people at the right time. And it's not always having the same impact, that you're intending to. One of the things we've really tried to shift towards is not only we still want to use those tools, right? Cause we definitely want to be as effective and as transparent our communications and we'll continue to do so. But we've realized that we also don't want to lose that sort of human effect, we do a quarterly community engagement nights where we invite the community, we bring pizza. ⁓ We invite all of our other partners to have that and we have city staff available. So you can have that in-person connection with someone. you know, it's even more so than an email or a phone call. It's actually that face to face and you get to meet the people are listening to your concerns and then implementing that city council members, stuff like that. and I think one of the things too is where we're focusing more on that human connection is that in-person touch is, don't like statistics ⁓ are just boggling to me, but let's say someone's aware of a certain topic, like even if they're aware of parking in Leavenworth, it still takes us seven to what we call touch points for us to even have like an effective messaging, right? So let's say we change something, we have to have not only the digital, but those in person. And I feel like those in person, they get to hear your tone, they get to see you, and it's just more, it's a more impactful touch point. ⁓ for people who don't know, let's say someone doesn't know anything about parking, you have to double that, right? We've been trying to feature some of our newer staff or we feature Like anytime we have sort of a human element, ⁓ you know, or a face, we just get so much more engagement on our algorithms. And it's so cool. People, especially in our community, people love feeling that connection, I think it just kind of brings that central piece of heart connection community, ⁓ something that maybe we lost after. ⁓ you know, the shift to digital and especially after maybe like COVID, so I think kind of bringing it back to the sort of that grassroots, we're not quite knocking on doors quite yet. We're not, we're not doing quite that, but just, yeah, we're leaving the door open and also just inviting people to like, hey, come talk to us. We're here, we want, and we want to talk to you. we want to hear your concerns. The mayor does a, Sarah Loyd: But you're leaving the door open. Kara Raftery: a weekly touch point over coffee or a beer every other week so people can talk to him in person. Sarah Loyd: do you find that, you know, having those in-person touch points ⁓ and letting your residents see the people behind, you know, the work that you guys are doing, do you feel like makes people a little bit more civil maybe on other platforms as Kara Raftery: I think I think it does make a difference. ⁓ at least we're making ourselves available and at least we're I definitely don't want anyone ever feel like we don't care or just didn't respond or Sarah Loyd: Mm-hmm. Kara Raftery: They weren't able to talk to someone. we need to make sure we're modifying our communications how we connect with people so that they feel heard, but feel also heard in a way that makes them feel heard. we're trying to meet people in a way that's meaningful and also more impactful. And, um, and in person is, is a really great way to do that. And like I said, community engagement night, there's pizza. So that's always, that's always a win. Yeah. Sarah Loyd: How can you say no to that? yeah, if nothing else, show up for the pizza, right? Kara Raftery: Exactly. Right? It's hot. It's delicious. There's cookies. It's a good time. So yeah. Sarah Loyd: That does sound like a good time. okay. I have to ask you about the bears. Before the podcast, you mentioned a collaborative effort that resulted in a 50 % reduction in black bear calls from 2024 to 2025, which is really remarkable. can you walk us through what that effort looked like and what role communications played in it? Kara Raftery: ⁓ yeah! Yes. And I could talk about, I could talk about this all day and I won't, but I could. this was one of those special projects that came into my lap when I first started. um, historically Leavenworth has been a really high conflict area, uh, for black bears and human interactions just because of where we're located and geographically, and also because of our, um, out of town guests. And we just, mean, the amount of unmitigated human created generated waste and trash that was happening in our community was substantial. So ⁓ I first started, I was working with ⁓ Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and I was able to connect with not only their conflict specialists, but their communications person for our region. And we really started taking a less reactive approach and a proactive approach. So because there's, ⁓ there's like 22, there's over 20,000 bears in Washington state, but there's probably about to 200 to 300 bears in the Leavenworth area. yeah, so quite a few. we took a multifaceted sort of multi-pronged approach from not only a comms perspective Sarah Loyd: ⁓ wow. Kara Raftery: where we were trying to be more proactive versus reactive, but also we took a really collaborative effort in partnering with not only the state, but also some nonprofit entities. We've worked really hard collaboratively building these relationships, connecting people, having those right conversations, putting infrastructure in I mean, we put hundreds of bears resistant cans, wildlife cans in our downtown core. We identified hotspots and if we didn't have infrastructure, we contracted out with waste management to have that. ⁓ and from a comms plan, we did better outreach research, social media. did in-person banners. They were present at our community engagement nights. It was so cool and to see such a significant impact. yeah, so from 24 to 25, we saw an over 50 % reduction in black bear related calls in our area, which is a huge, which is massive, right? Like it felt so good, so good. mean, so our target goal is zero. And yeah, and at the end of the day, we really want to be like our community really wants to be the first. Sarah Loyd: Thank Yeah, massive. Yes. Kara Raftery: recognized bear wise community in Washington state. because we want to keep our bears wild and we want to keep, ⁓ you know, our residents also, ⁓ safe and informed and knowledgeable about black bears in our area. And, cause it's a beautiful thing, right? Like the wildlife, you know, at the bottom of the cascades. ⁓ but we also want to protect, protect them and keep them wild. And yeah, like from, yeah, from a distance. Yeah. Not, not on your deck, going through your trash cans. So, ⁓ Sarah Loyd: Yeah, we'll see them like over there doing their thing. Not, not up in your business. Right. Kara Raftery: ⁓ something that never would have been a successful effort if we hadn't built those relationships. cannot stress enough how you can't, as a team of one, you also can't work in a silo, right? So ⁓ I mean you could, but I don't recommend it. So, and you just get to meet so many cool people who do cool things and you get to enact really great change for your community. And I think that that's a really beautiful thing. Sarah Loyd: Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ Tell me a little bit about how your toolkit helps you survive when you're trying to do more with less. Kara Raftery: ⁓ Well, I love that you think I have a toolkit. That's great. I would love to have a toolkit. actually like as soon as you see ⁓ junk drawer. that might be more. Yeah, ⁓ if I could break it down to like really, it's really people, right? So I mean, there some programs that I've definitely put in place. And I would definitely encourage anyone who's struggling with Sarah Loyd: Hahaha Maybe it's more of a drawer that has some tools in it. Kara Raftery: workflow or workload to find, you know, something that makes your job easier streamlines it, puts everything one in place, does the report tracking for you. You know, there's lots of ⁓ Social News Desk is one of those things like the reason we do use is because I can post it once and I can, and then, you know, across our platforms, which is I have to do it one time ⁓ and just the reporting feature is great. So that's a great ⁓ example, probably my toolkit, but honestly, it's really the people. So. of who I can go to when I need support. so yeah, so whether it's social news, does a program to, help, ⁓ you know, something digitally easier a person, like I do have ⁓ an individual that I work with who I just need something, I can just send it to them and just make it happen. Sarah Loyd: so ⁓ one last question before we get to the fun stuff. ⁓ So advice for someone starting out for government communications was focus on building and maintaining relationships and your fluffles. ⁓ What's a fluffle and why does everyone in government comms need one? Kara Raftery: goodness. I like have young right? So we recently watched Zootopia 2 and Judy Hopps is a rabbit and they're talking, you and her partner, and you know, she says, you're my fluffle. And so it's basically like you're a group of rabbits, right? So it's your team, your family, sort of your home, sort of that network. And I just love it because I think it's a beautiful word. It's key for anyone starting out. ⁓ One of things that I would recommend is meet as many people as you can and connect with as many people as you can. I have the privilege of actually connecting with regional PIOs. So our public information officers, have, we try to meet quarterly and ⁓ my goodness, it has been the most amazing experience, not only being able to learn from people who have been doing this a lot longer than I, but also just understanding that we're facing a lot of similar challenges and being able to say like, hey, how did you resolve that? Or what did you find successful? Or, you know, how would you have done it differently? finding someone who can ⁓ relate and understand and support you is great. But your can be whatever you it to be, right? It could be someone of, mean, Sarah, do you want to be in my fluffle you know, right? ⁓ So yeah, and think that that's really cool because at the end of the day, that's what's going to, I think. Sarah Loyd: Absolutely, I would be honored to be part of the Fluffle. Kara Raftery: where we succeed is when we're successful in building those relationships and utilizing everyone to be better and grow, which is great. So, but yeah, but so find your fluffle, build those relationships and don't give up, right? So it's hard work, but it can be incredibly rewarding and it's really important work. If anyone hasn't told you today and you're in city government, what you do matters and you're awesome. ⁓ And yeah, keep going. You're, ⁓ you're doing great. If anyone hasn't told you today and you're in city government, what you do matters and you're awesome. ⁓ And yeah, keep going. You're, ⁓ you're doing great. Sarah Loyd: I love that so much. I want to shout out some other fluffle organizations like ⁓ is a great you are new to go and find your fluffle, I know that's where we met ⁓ a few years ago. ⁓ There's also regional ⁓ Any time you get together in person, it's just amazing to see. ⁓ Kara Raftery: Mm-hmm. Yes. Sarah Loyd: you know, hundreds of people who do the thing that you do and understand what you're doing. So Kara, we always end with the lightning round. This is quick. There's fun. It's fun. There's wrong answers. So what is your favorite local spot in Leavenworth? Kara Raftery: I can't pick spot in Leavenworth, but I do have a favorite spot in the valley. And I know this is going to sound, this is going to sound weird, but there's this part in the river along my drive and I call it Eagle Point because there's this bend and it's gorgeous. And at any given time, you'll see anywhere from three to like 12, like ⁓ bald eagles or birds of prey or hawks. And it's just, it's epically gorgeous. And it's just this beautiful part in the river and it's right in the valley. Sarah Loyd: Yeah, that sounds that sounds gorgeous. So you don't have a favorite spot necessarily in Leavenworth, but what's the most ⁓ underrated part your community? Kara Raftery: our public transit system hands down. Uh, link transit is it's zero fare. So it's free to ride in our entire Valley. And it is amazing. It is an incredible resource. and also Katie Tackman, shout out to Katie Tackman. She's their outreach specialist. She's fantastic on their social media. Yeah, I think it's very underrated and we are so lucky to have a free public transit system for our entire Valley. It's really cool. ⁓ we're very, very thankful for them. Sarah Loyd: All right. Last question. ⁓ If Leavenworth had a theme song, what would it be? ⁓ Kara Raftery: We actually have a theme song it's called, I'm going to say the title wrong, Get Your Goomsba Up. So it's by, it's by like Der Crew Town for, yeah, I will send you the link, but yeah, it's Get Your Up. It's ⁓ an old song from a time ago, but I would say that that's probably our theme song. And there's a very highly loved YouTube video out there, music video to go along with it. So. Sarah Loyd: Okay. Kara Raftery: ⁓ so look it up and it's pretty, it's pretty entertaining. So. Sarah Loyd: Yeah, definitely send that to me. We'll have to put it in the show notes so people can check that out. And ⁓ I said last question, but this is my real last question. What is your best piece of advice for someone just starting out in government comms? Kara Raftery: you My best piece of advice. I feel like I wish I had like a cool catchphrase. So, but I would just say find your fluffle, build those relationships and don't give up. So, and call me, call me. That's my advice. Call me. Let's Yeah, because ⁓ the work you do ⁓ and it does make difference. yeah. So find your fluffle, build those relationships. Call or ⁓ call and then, yeah, and give up. We're here for you and ⁓ it's great So, so and thank you for doing it. Sarah Loyd: you Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has been such a great conversation ⁓ where can people find you and follow what's happening in Leavenworth? Kara Raftery: Well, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. can also go to our website or you can subscribe to my weekly Wilkey 52 times a year. But you can contact me email or phone Or you can come me person at City Hall. So that works too. Sarah Loyd: Well, thank you again so much for your time today. This has been such an amazing conversation. that is it for this episode of Modern Gov Matters. And if this resonated with you or if you've got a story that we should hear, reach out to us. And for more episodes, you can check us out at moderngovmatters.com. Modern Gov Matters is presented by CivAll, powered by Social News Desk. I'm Sarah Loyd and thanks for listening. We'll see you in a couple of weeks.