Accessing the City of Muncie’s municipal code has gotten a lot faster recently as the city clerk’s office has continued to bring city documents into the 21st century.

During the 2019 municipal election, Belinda Munson ran for city clerk on a platform that she wanted to have the clerk’s office digitize more records and the city’s code, bringing them online for easy use by the public.

“As many of our citizens work full-time it is not feasible to go downtown to the clerk’s office and view them there,” Munson stated on her campaign website. “In this age of technology, community members should be able to view public meeting minutes and other documents without leaving home.”

Munson says that’s a goal her team at the clerk’s office has been working on for the past year with a company called MuniCode, as well as revamping the way Muncie collects fees and more.

When faced with a website redesign, one of the first things they did was add a section for the municipal code on the homepage of cityofmuncie.com that links to a fully digital (and searchable) version of city code. Officials have helped digitize records going back to 2014.

The code was on the city’s old website for a short time as a large .pdf file, but wasn’t nearly as accessible as the current version.

That change was only step one.

Munson’s office also has helped digitize records for the city council meetings, including the minutes, agendas, resolutions and permits. Those can also be found through the city website.

Or you can simply go to library.municode.com/in/muncie to find both the ordinance listings and those documents. Munson’s office has helped digitize records as far back as 2014.

Munson said officials, mainly several attorneys, are working on clarifications to the city code so that it not only has updated legal language, but refers to the correct parts of the code in case there was an error by someone previously. These changes make sure they match what was actually passed by the different governing bodies.

“Some of the ordinances are outdated or there are duplicates,” Munson said. “They need to be reviewed so they actually correlate with what the code actually is.”

It’s her office’s version of spring cleaning for municipal codes.

Nearly a third of the code, which deals with metropolitan planning ordinances, is being reviewed by the Delaware-Muncie Metropolitan Plan Commission office, headed by Marta Moody. The rest will be split up depending on what governmental entity oversees those parts of the code.

It’s not flashy work, or even something that the average citizen would notice on a day-to-day basis, but it will help, according to Munson.

“I just want everything to be accessible,” Munson said.