Young pinball wizards and all skateboarders can rejoice that their activities might soon become legal in Muncie.

Those who never knew playing pinball machines while under 16 is an offense or that there is a total ban on anyone riding a skateboard can be forgiven, as city ordinances have not always kept up with real life over the decades.

That is changing, however.

The accumulated municipal ordinances of Muncie from the 1860s through today, including one forbidding fortunetelling in city parks and another not allowing animals to be “driven” on sidewalks, has been reviewed for update by Municode, a company from Tallahassee, Florida. Muncie City Council is expected to start considering proposed changes to ordinances on Monday night. The first area reviewed by the council will be the city’s traffic code.

City Clerk Belinda Munson said she promised to concentrate on the city clerk’s job of maintaining public records and keeping them in good condition when she ran for office in 2019. She hired Municode for $15,000. The money came from her office’s “preservation fund,” which is meant to pay for the proper maintenance of city records.

“As I learned the job, I realized they codify ordinances as we go,” Munson said.

Ordinances were simply added to the code. There was no matching of ordinance language and definitions and no assurances that the city code doesn’t contain conflicting or redundant ordinances. And local laws are sometimes superseded by state law or have grown obsolete.

“There is a whole section on cable TV,” Munson said. The city used to grant franchises and regulate cable television in the city.

“I probably do 70 codes a year,” said Roger D. Merriam, senior code attorney with Municode. “Muncie’s was better than many.”