Is Macon City Hall Finally Listening?
An $80 million water-treatment controversy exposed the importance of Macon's municipal laws. Now, after years of questions about public access to those laws, Mayor Holman is reportedly preparing to address the issue.
By R. Dominique — Macon Moonline Investigates
Tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 13, I'll be attending the Macon City Council meeting with my recording equipment, cameras, and microphones. But what interests me most about this particular meeting isn't what I intend to bring into City Hall. It's what Mayor Talt Holman may finally be bringing to the council table.
Something Macon citizens have been asking for: free, unrestricted, 24-hour online access to the Macon City Code. The very laws and ordinances that govern our property, businesses, neighborhoods, and everyday lives.
I recently submitted a written request to address the City Council concerning this issue. My request was denied, and City Clerk Annastasia Rucker informed me that Mayor Holman would be addressing the matter himself at Tuesday night's meeting.
Well, that's interesting.
After years of questions, public discussion, and several articles published by Macon Moonline Investigates concerning the lack of online access to our municipal laws, the mayor is apparently ready to discuss the subject.
Whether that discussion produces anything meaningful remains to be seen. But I believe the citizens who have expressed their concerns, asked questions, and continued pressing for greater transparency deserve some recognition for keeping this issue alive.
And if anyone still wonders why having the Macon City Code available online is important, we need only revisit what happened when Macon Municipal Utilities attempted to combine two proposed water treatment projects into a single $80 million financing package.
That episode demonstrated just how important it is for citizens to have ready access to the laws their own government is supposed to follow.
An $80 Million Proposal Meets the Macon City Code
Macon Municipal Utilities has been pursuing construction of two major infrastructure projects: a new drinking-water treatment plant and a new wastewater treatment plant. Together, the proposed projects could involve borrowing as much as $80 million.
That's a considerable financial commitment for a community the size of Macon, especially when the resulting debt could affect utility customers for decades.
The controversy wasn't simply about whether Macon needs modern water and wastewater treatment facilities. It was about how those projects would be financed and whether citizens would have an opportunity to vote on them separately.
MMU proposed combining the two projects into one financing arrangement and presenting voters with a single ballot question.
There was just one rather important problem.
Macon's existing City Code treated the waterworks and sewerage systems separately, raising questions about whether the proposed combined financing arrangement could proceed without first changing the governing ordinances.
According to the discussion during the special council meeting, a citizen happened to notice the proposed ordinance posted inside City Hall and alerted city officials to a potential conflict. This reportedly occurred on the very morning the council was scheduled to consider an ordinance that would allow the two projects to be combined.
Think about that for a moment. An ordinary citizen, examining an ordinance posted inside City Hall, reportedly identified a problem involving a proposed $80 million public financing arrangement before the City Council acted on it.
During the council proceedings, Mayor Holman and Councilman Steve Olinger acknowledged the issue.
Former Mayor Tony Petre also addressed the council, explaining his concern that combining the two projects into one ballot question would deprive Macon voters of the opportunity to decide separately whether they supported each project.
Petre raised an important point. A citizen might support replacing the drinking-water treatment plant but oppose the proposed wastewater project, or vice versa. Combining both into one ballot question would eliminate that choice.
The council considered an ordinance that would permit the systems to be combined. The vote was three in favor and three opposed, with two council members absent. The ordinance failed.
Although that vote did not settle every legal question surrounding the previously approved bond proposal or the November ballot, it demonstrated that Macon's own municipal ordinances were central to a decision involving tens of millions of dollars.
And it raised a question that should concern every resident of Macon.
What might have happened if that citizen hadn't noticed the ordinance?
What If the City Code Had Been Online?
I wasn't registered to address the council during that special meeting. However, Mayor Holman invited comments from those in attendance, and I took the opportunity to speak.
I asked what might have happened if the Macon City Code had already been available online.
Would someone have identified the problem before the proposed ordinance reached the council? Would a citizen researching the water treatment projects have noticed the conflict weeks earlier? Might someone within City Hall or Macon Municipal Utilities have caught the issue before the financing proposal advanced as far as it did?
We cannot know the answers to those questions. But we do know that public access to the City's laws would make it considerably easier for citizens, journalists, business owners, and even government employees to examine the ordinances governing municipal decisions.
The Macon City Code contains the local laws and ordinances passed by the City Council to regulate municipal activity. It is organized into chapters and articles covering everything from zoning restrictions and property nuisances to building permits and safety codes.
Expecting the citizens of Macon to obey local laws and ordinances while providing no easy way to reference those laws simply isn't logical.
And quietly placing a newly codified edition of the Macon City Code in our public library back in July 2025 doesn't count.
I've examined that copy. We're talking about thousands of pages of text, printed in a font so small that reading it is difficult, much less searching through it for a particular ordinance. And, of course, the document is available only during library operating hours.
But there's more.
To examine the City Code at the library, I was required to provide my name, address, and telephone number. A librarian monitored my access to the book, and I was told that if any pages turned up missing, the library would know whom to contact. This is not hyperbole. This actually took place as described. We're talking about a public document containing the laws that govern our community, not a classified government intelligence file.
I question whether requiring citizens to surrender personal information simply to examine their municipal laws is appropriate. I even wonder whether such a requirement has any legal justification.
But regardless of the legality, why should anyone have to go through this process just to find out what their own city ordinances say?
This isn't some revolutionary technological undertaking. Cities and towns across Missouri already make their municipal codes available online, and some of those communities are considerably smaller than Macon. Take Clarence, Missouri, for example.
The neighboring town of Clarence has a population of approximately 700 people, yet its extensive City Code is available online for anyone to examine. I contacted the Clarence City Clerk to learn how they accomplished something Macon has apparently found so difficult.
According to the clerk, the online indexing service costs approximately $2 per day. That is not a typo. Clarence pays just $2 a day for this service.
The clerk also explained that newly adopted ordinances are placed in a separate, non-codified section until they can be incorporated into the official codified document, a process performed several times each year. That's how a living municipal code can be maintained. New ordinances are adopted, existing ordinances are amended, and the public can continue accessing the information while those changes are incorporated.
One argument we've encountered in Macon is that the City Code isn't sufficiently current to be placed online. But the Clarence example raises an obvious question: Why should a municipal code have to be perfectly current before citizens can access it electronically when newly adopted ordinances can be published separately until the next codification?
Yet Macon residents have been directed to a physical copy of the City Code at the public library.
In 2026.
We're talking about the laws that govern our property, our businesses, our utilities, our neighborhoods, and our daily lives. Citizens are expected to obey those laws. Shouldn't they also be able to read them without making a trip to the library, providing personal information, and searching through thousands of pages of tiny print?
Newly Elected Mayor & Council Faces an Old Problem
When Macon's new city administration took office approximately six months ago, transparency and accessibility were recurring themes in the public discussion surrounding city government.
Those are worthwhile commitments. But promises of transparency eventually have to produce something citizens can actually see and use. Putting the Macon City Code online would be a practical, measurable improvement. It wouldn't require building a new City Hall, hiring a department of computer programmers, or undertaking a multimillion-dollar technology project.
It would simply make the laws of Macon accessible to the people governed by them.
I don't know what Mayor Holman intends to say tomorrow night. Perhaps he will announce that the City is moving forward with online publication. Perhaps he will discuss the costs, available services, or obstacles that have prevented it from happening.
Or perhaps we'll hear that the matter requires additional study.
I'll be listening, and this time I'll have the recording equipment necessary to preserve the proceedings for citizens who cannot attend.
That's another area where Macon's city government has room for improvement. We've already reported on the poor audio quality of council proceedings and the absence of an accessible archive of recorded meetings. If citizens cannot attend in person, they should still have a reasonable opportunity to hear what their elected representatives are saying.
Making the City Code available online and improving access to council meetings are two different issues, but they share the same underlying principle.
Public business should be accessible to the public.
Who Gets the Credit?
Frankly, I don't particularly care whether Mayor Holman introduces the proposal, a council member makes the motion, or someone else ultimately arranges to put the City Code online.
I didn't request an opportunity to address the council because I wanted my name attached to a municipal website. I requested it because I believe the people of Macon deserve access to their own laws. If the mayor moves this issue forward, I'll be happy to report that progress. If the council takes meaningful action, the public deserves to know about it. And if nothing happens, we'll report that too.
What I do believe is that the public discussion, the questions raised by citizens, and the articles we've published have helped bring attention to an issue that should have been addressed long ago.
Whether those efforts directly prompted tomorrow night's discussion is something only the mayor and city officials can explain. But the timing is certainly worth observing.
Regards Maconites,
R. Dominique - Editor
