When Muncie City Council met for their first 2026 meeting last week, now-President Jeff Green decided in his first decision in the role that he would make several restrictions for public comments: 1. Members of the public can only speak for two minutes instead of three. 2. Ordinances up for introduction will not have their own comment portions. 3. No members of the public can sign up to speak after the meeting starts. 4. Public comments will take place at the start of the meetings instead of the end. 5. Council will “not put up with language nor attitudes that are incorrect and would cause dissension.” And 6. Speakers will have to state their home address when at the podium.

What’s astonishing about these egregious changes is the fact that there have been no major disruptions made at the meetings by audience members. I myself have been known to heckle here and there in the last couple years (so has Richard Ivy), but the real kicker is that arguments between our council and Mayor Dan Ridenour have been the most disruptive parts of the meetings. Putting that aside, and forgetting council’s lack of care when it comes to parliamentary procedures, Jeff Green’s decision is nothing more than a continuation of a vast set of restrictions made for the past year and a half regarding social media censorship and an overall lack of care for transparency.

Back in July of 2024, Ridenour decided to get rid of commenting on the City of Muncie Facebook page. His administration had a separate “City of Muncie Communications” page created, which shares the same content of the official page only with commenting enabled. There wasn’t a single reason provided for the decision, nor were there any major incidents with commenting prior to this. As of writing, the communications page holds less than 3k followers to the 23k for the official page, giving any thoughts or concerns posted to the communications page little traction or attention (almost as if that’s the point).

In the same month, City Hall moved the livestreaming of public meetings from the official Facebook page to a YouTube channel. Yet to this day, Ridenour continues posting his weekly community update videos to Facebook instead of YouTube, and has occasionally livestreamed to Facebook if it helps his image (in one case livestreaming a Veterans Day service where the now-Republican Chairman Tim Overton gave a speech). Conveniently for Ridenour, any videos edited by his team to help him politically are on Facebook, where the vast majority of citizens interested in the happenings of Muncie go to, and YouTube is where you can find the vast majority of criticism directed at him by elected officials and the public alike.

One would hope that at the very least, if this is the platform just for the image of Mayor Ridenour only, he would use social media and the city website to bring some transparency. You’d be mistaken. Since his appointment of Ryan Webb to the Muncie Land Bank, Ridenour has been nearly silent about any of his recent appointments. There have been no formal announcements, press releases or through social media, about his last three appointments to the Human Rights Commission (Steve Sneed, Michele Owen, and Gretchen Cheesman) or for the Opioid Fund Advisory Committee (Eric Hoffman, Linda Daniel, and Dewayne Wiggans). Setting aside snarky comments made by his administration on their social media, the fact that his city controller and deputy controller can’t provide basic information to members of council, or a forged signature being put onto a resolution for council, people want to know what’s going on in Muncie and can hardly trust City Hall in this or any capacity.

Outside of the fact that Jeff Green’s decision prevents even more dissent from being heard, it is massively hypocritical for Green to say citizens can’t voice “language nor attitudes that are incorrect and would cause dissension.” Recently, Communications Director Amber Greene decided to go swinging into the lifestyle of using outdated boomer humor against a marginalized group. Dying to stay young, and on good terms with the 60-year-old men in the DelCo GOP, she bravely clicked on an eggplant emoji to describe trans women as “pretending” to be women on her edgy Facebook.com account. It’s not a shock to anyone that the Republicans on council need to stay on good terms with this desperate numbskull and therefore won’t say anything about it. Though it’s 100% hypocritical given their avowed commitment to “uphold civility” and “condemn hateful rhetoric.” (Read Resolution 18-25 that was passed unanimously).

Like many of these creeps, she couldn’t care less about the cruelties facing the trans community (the Trans Panic Defense, “V-Coding” in the prison system, Indiana Senate Bill 182 that would prevent us from changing our birth certificates or ID’s if passed, etc.), nor does she have the teeth to do anything important with her job. Amber Kantz would likely roll her eyes at the idea of her job being considered “public service,” and actively wants every day at work to be a rerun of an aged Jerry Springer episode.

Near the end of 2025, the Facebook page altogether stopped even posting links to any of the public meetings. And, thanks to changes by the platform itself, many of the Facebook livestreams from anytime before July of 2024 are now erased. No videos of city council are available on the platform, and as of writing this Amber Greene hasn’t given an answer as to whether those recordings are saved at City Hall. While City Hall isn’t required to keep recordings accessible after ninety days, according to Indiana Code 5-14-1.5-2.9 livestreaming meetings is in fact a requirement. They broke this requirement recently, both on October 16th when council had to hold a special session to adopt the city’s 2026 budget, and for their finance committee’s September 5th meeting.

Some local Republicans have voiced their opposition to the rule changes, and the only ardent defender has been DelCo GOP Chairman Tim Overton, who claimed that two businesses that were considering operating in Muncie decided against the idea just from watching our council meetings. If that really is the case, believe me, that is absolutely the fault of Ridenour. Overton is someone who can’t shut the fuck up about “woke politics” taking over Muncie, and claiming that local Democrats want to do a Jan. 6th-style disruption to an early voting site, so it’s no wonder he can only repeat the same script instead of actually following what’s happening at the very meetings he sits in on.

I for one am never going to be told to shut up for the sake of drawing more slumlords into town, or another Accutech or corporate overlords or whatever “two businesses” even refers to. If you’re against this, whoever you are, bring a crowd to the February council meeting. Be a nuisance, don’t even think about giving your address at the podium, and anything you hear about police escorting people out is purely a bluff.