Dirty Partisans

As citizens we have little to no access to what’s going on in local government. Every detail that we can be provided is designed to obfuscate the meaning and push us out of the process all together, so now we’re stuck to only trusting a small social club of people who just barely understand it either. For any issue that is a widespread concern (E.G. what Middletown Property Group was doing in 2022 or how the city handled the Muncie Inn situation), it gets met with excuses that the city has no ability to act on it. At which point you’re supposed to feel halted from even asking what they can do for you, because you can’t make demands if you don’t know those hazy ins and outs (which were never explained to you in the first place).

In our city government, it’s either pure incompetency or blatant corruption. And none of us want to make the worst accusation and have it turn out to just be the result of mere ignorance, but the fact is they both work hand in hand with each other. Incompetency is the perfect excuse for that outcome, and most sane people would rather turn the other cheek and say “bless their heart” than confront stupidity head on.

Last week we had a fiasco with the recording of April’s city council meeting. Meetings are livestreamed to Facebook, broadcasted through Comcast, and available after the fact, but due to several errors the video was nowhere to be found. Early in the meeting the City of Muncie Facebook page wrote “Do to a non-city issue with our Comcast connection, tonights Council meeting will be posted following the meeting. We apologize for the delay.” Later that night the same post was deleted, and the recording was never livestreamed, broadcasted, or subsequently posted online as they said. For two days we were all asking when we’ll see it (you should know that some of us work during those meetings), and finally the page told us that the video wasn’t recorded.

The post was met with over 150 comments, including one impassioned resident who cited SB 1167 that requires city council meetings to be livestreamed and archived. At which point the page acted swiftly and posted a Dropbox link to another audio source from the Council Secretary’s laptop. Less convenient for those who wanted to watch in real time, but we voiced our angst and they acted when a consequence was probable. We had one attainable objective, not the most important one in the scheme of things, but the public got a bit of transparency for once. Otherwise, we would have had to wait another month for a single page worth of minutes.

How often does this success really happen do you ask? Well, it can be next to impossible with this current administration. Even with the kind of messages we’ve heard before from previous mayors about “efficiency” and “professionalism,” which ends up translating into privatization and favoring business interests, they at least did things legally and could dress it nicely. The Ridenour administration has used transparency as a selling point, and “we can’t go back” as their slogan, yet Ridenour’s ghouls can barely hide their true colors anymore. Ridenour, in his estimation, doesn’t feel the need to even acknowledge something like the Ratchford deal, let alone make up a half believable story. He doesn’t have to be at contentious meetings to face the public, or provide details to said public or even help the council to understand.

The most major development happening recently is the new firehouse, first formally introduced to be voted on in October of last year and at the last meeting before the election. Ridenour’s purpose in doing this was highly political, and despite him and other Republicans accusing Democrats of playing dirty politics, they never explained why this had to be introduced at the last minute.

For the council and the public that’s concerned about the process, it’s about avoiding potential grafting, debt to the City of Muncie, incompetency leading to construction delays, and letting the public know about what “transaction documents” were being referred to in the first place. A month-long delay for council to get the answers is nothing compared to the amount of time it will take construction from happening.

But frankly, I for one am at a point where I just want this to be done with. Republicans are at fault for delaying the process because they wouldn’t let us look critically at how this is being done, and if making Muncie into Ridenour’s real estate hellscape is an exchange for a desperately needed fire station, then fuck it. But this doesn’t change the fact that they brought this out during a contentious election just to campaign on it, that Dale Basham lied and changed his story multiple times about the resolution, and the fact that this administration has denied requests by council-members to talk at length about the Build Operate Transfer process. What they have done and will continue to do is make us exhaust all resources to get answers only to get nothing in return. In my experience doing FOIA requests for instance, they have slowed down the process for weeks (or months) before outright rejecting requests by the end of that timeframe.

In the Post-Democrat’s attempt to provide local journalism in some capacity, I called City Hall about an interview with Ridenour. It’s no secret that mayors are busy and I clearly wasn’t expecting him to drop everything and give me an interview, so I asked for 15 minutes max and having it months down the line. Ridenour’s assistant Shareen Wagley first said he was busy for another two weeks, and when I checked again about doing an interview afterwards or even months later she then said he’ll never accept an interview. Now, are we a partisan paper with the word “Democrat” right in the name? Yes. But what local news do we have here besides the Post-Democrat?