{"id":17064,"date":"2024-10-08T12:32:38","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T16:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/?p=17064"},"modified":"2024-11-07T15:06:20","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T20:06:20","slug":"we-deserve-better-from-our-public-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/08\/we-deserve-better-from-our-public-meetings\/","title":{"rendered":"We Deserve Better From Our Public Meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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We Deserve Better From Our Public Meetings<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Mayor Ridenour seen with a pretentious Patagonia-style vest and Audie Barber with a “Support AFSCME Local 3656” shirt<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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10.8.2024 \/ News \/ munciepostdemocrat.com<\/u><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Normally, in our recaps of council meetings the next morning, we avoid editorializing. Op-Eds have their own place on the Post-Democrat, though we try making an exception for this routine monthly story. <\/span>Last night’s city council session for October cannot be talked about without mentioning the vast number of awkward pauses and hesitation, as well as mayhem seemingly jumping in from every direction. This isn’t unlike meetings earlier in the year, though it’s now come to a turning point.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two most contentious issues were <\/span>originally<\/span> <\/span>going to be Ordinance 23-24 and Resolution 11-24. But the former, one dealing with the 2025 civil budget, was not up for a vote but instead only for public comment, which led to several individuals leaving the building when they realized there was nothing to pay attention to. The ordinance was briefly discussed, although the decision surrounding Resolution 11-24 was overwhelmed by tech issues, as both city attorney Dan Gibson and council-member Nora Powell were joining the meeting by phone. After ongoing connection issues and audio problems the end result finally was an amended resolution passed by 8-0 (with council-member Brandon Garrett absent and not joining through phone).<\/span><\/p>\n

After the continual tech errors, subsequent delays, and other face palm inducing moments, people throughout the room starting laughing off the mediocrity. Admittedly it was a smug move coming from administration officials (I’m looking at you Richard Ivy) but for the most part this response was more than justified. This has also been a problem since Jerry Dishman became President in January, and has a harder time following the meeting procedures compared to their previous President Jeff Robinson.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is blame for this going all around: most of the tech issues that IT needed to fix could have been easily solvable with two adapters and a charger. Even the internet issues could have been managed had they spent time prior to the meeting ensuring both Gibson and Powell were able to join without major issues. Both IT and the council caused this, and they are a joke for letting this all happen the way it did. And, <\/span>Jerry Dishman needs to step down as President and have Nora Powell take his place. For all the grudges people have held against Powell over the years, at the very least she can keep track of which agenda item is being discussed and can finish a sentence. On top of this, with a 6-3 majority, their party has no excuse not to be mavericks who take over the meetings. With Res. 11-24, which was a continuation of the project for a new firehouse, Republican Ro Selvey tried to swiftly get it passed while Gibson was disconnected from the call. Luckily it was amended instead, but that’s just a taste of how her party tries running these meetings despite Democrats have a super majority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Democrats in council believe that because they have that majority, they don’t need to do anything beyond that single accomplishment. In their minds they’ve already done everything they can to stop Ridenour from turning Muncie into a real estate hellscape, and yet they themselves are not being proactive in that effort. They can look back at some decisions made between 2020 and 2023, like any changes to municipal code done by the Republican-majority council, and reverse them. Or, create ordinances giving more balanced power between them and the administration. <\/span><\/span>This is why <\/span>Ridenour<\/span> <\/span>in recent meetings hasn’t taken the council seriously, and instead has been doing everything he can to go around them.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Outside of the attempts by this administration to delegitimize the authority held by council, that is also the goal when it comes to the MRC (Muncie Redevelopment Commission).\u00a0<\/span><\/span>It was pointed out months ago that the city’s page for the MRC had an outdated list of appointed commissioners, and the task of updating the list seemed to be avoided for the sake of leaving out two appointments made by the Democrat-majority council, Zane Bishop and Andrew Dale. Sometime after when the page was updated, there was no longer a list of commissioners and instead the contact info of the new MRC Director, Jeff Howe. Therefore, if developers or any other person or entity is going to consider reaching out to the MRC, they won’t first be thinking about how to get approval from a commission equally appointed by the mayor and council, but from one individual appointed and under a payroll.<\/span><\/p>

That position was once filled by Ridenour himself for a period of time. Years later at the start of his second term he then played around with having the role filled again, this time by a then-commissioner Howe. This was after Isaac Miller’s term as a board member expired, and both him and\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Lorraine Tomlin<\/span>\u00a0were replaced by Bishop and Dale. With a slim amount of notice prior to February 15th, Miller was placed back in as President, and Howe was then moved to Director.<\/span><\/p>

You would be right in calling these actions sleazy, but there’s even more to it:\u00a0<\/span>Recently, a resolution titled “Director Spending Policy” in the minutes gives Mr. Howe the ability to make spending decisions between their meetings, up to $10,000, ostensibly making him act as a department head that doesn’t have to wait on the vote of the commission.\u00a0<\/span>If you are a resident who wants to speak against this spending, not only are these decisions ones that the commission doesn’t entirely make now, but to even follow the obfuscating legal language at most of these meetings is difficult for the average person. Or, in the case of Board of Works meetings, these decisions are brief.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Additionally, there is once again an issue for\u00a0accessibility with social media<\/a><\/span>, in which the livestreams have now been moved from Facebook to YouTube. Communications Director Amber Greene is right to say there are benefits to it being on YouTube, and I know other cities like Bloomington do the same thing. But making it readily available to Facebook on top of that would be a simple solution for residents who have been used to it being so for several years.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>And realistically, every time there is a change from platform to platform there is going to be less and less comments, and with meetings being exclusively on YouTube the comments will even more apathetic and cruel. Supposedly, the entire reason that Ridenour wanted to remove comments from the official Facebook page was because of meanness, which makes this decision completely ironic. Last night there was only one crackpot who commented fifty times on the YouTube stream, entirely different from how comments were in January where we had lots more commenters who were actually treating it like a public square.<\/span><\/p>

Greene was a recent hire and we can’t speak to her intentions, but we can’t act as if Ridenour is genuine\u00a0<\/span>in this\u00a0<\/span>whatsoever. Let’s remember that when commenting was first changed from the official Facebook page to a separate communications page, this happened at the same time as a press release was made regarding the <\/span>Dustin Clark fiasco<\/a><\/span>. The administration is worried about what residents might say about things like that SBA investigation, or as of right now an entire budget for next year that doesn’t bode well for AFSCME employees (who still don’t have a renewed contract after nearly 18 months).<\/span><\/p>

Let me put it this way: I huffed a lot of spray paint making those AFSCME shirts before the meeting, and that still didn’t get me through what was soon to come. This wasn’t just a single awkward meeting, but a scary precedent being set to each and every one of us. If there are decisions being made to improve, they need to be done sooner than later and without half measures.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Deserve Better From Our Public Meetings Mayor Ridenour seen with a pretentious Patagonia-style vest and Audie Barber with a “Support AFSCME Local 3656” shirt. 10.8.2024 \/ News \/ munciepostdemocrat.com […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17064"}],"version-history":[{"count":218,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17490,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064\/revisions\/17490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}