Hello, thanks for looking!
Apologies for the lack of clarity, the common theme across the comments I've received is that the information portrayal is far more convoluted than it needed to be.
I've only managed to think of potential solutions to that issue after the jam...it's possible that it all made sense to myself while I was developing it, but I hadn't quite considered the most user-friendly ways to portray information to other players.
I'd probably either direct more attention to the sticky-notes when it's relevant, or have a tutorial for the first phase of the game, which has you up and running with a basic town by the time it starts picking up.