Macon’s City Code Online - Our Gift to the Citizens ...
By R. Dominique | Macon Moonline Investigates
Nearly 1,000 photographs. Several trips and over six hours spent at the library. Pages organized, indexed, and made accessible online. Approximately two-thirds of the Macon City Code is now available through Moonline Open Code on our website, free for anyone to use.
Getting there began with a simple question: How are citizens supposed to understand the laws governing their city when reading those laws requires a trip to the library?
A printed copy of the Macon City Code was quietly placed at the Macon Public Library in July 2025. The latest ordinance incorporated into that collection dates to April 2025. That distinction matters: ordinances adopted afterward may change the rules residents find in the binder.
During his October City Council mayor’s report, Mayor Talt Holman said he wants the City Code online, too. He explained that, as a builder, going to the library to consult the code is inconvenient.
He is right. Homeowners, contractors, business owners, and residents researching neighborhood concerns face that same inconvenience. They must work around library hours and search through a printed collection to find rules they should be able to read on their phones.
Holman said making the code searchable and available online would cost thousands of dollars. He stated that the current code is not easily searchable or up-to-date. He said the city needs to contract with a website and codification provider and that he had spoken with several firms. His timetable was tentative: perhaps by the end of June 2027.
Meanwhile, residents still need to know what their city’s laws say.
I submitted a Missouri Sunshine Law request for the Macon City Code in its existing digital format so I could obtain a copy. City Clerk Annastasia Rucker quoted a price a few dollars short of $700.
That would have purchased access to the older Word file. I would still have needed to organize and convert the material into the indexed, searchable resource I wanted to make available.
Instead, I started going to the library.
Those visits became hours-long sessions photographing the code, page after page. Nearly 1,000 photographs later, approximately two-thirds of the collection has been indexed and posted through Moonline Open Code. The remaining material is still being gathered.
This work matters because the City Code reaches into decisions much larger than a fence, a building permit, or a neighborhood complaint.
Consider the proposed $80 million drinking water and wastewater treatment project placed on the November 3 ballot. The ballot asks voters to authorize financing for a combined waterworks and sewerage system. Yet the systems have operated separately, and the council’s September 8 attempt to adopt an ordinance combining them failed on a 3–3 vote. Reporting based on the council’s minutes describes earlier advice that the city could combine the systems before the election or pursue separate ballot questions.
That leaves residents entitled to a direct explanation of what the failed ordinance means for the financing proposal and what action is required before the city can proceed. The legal effect on the November vote needs an authoritative answer.
Would readily accessible ordinances have prevented this situation? After all, a citizen had seen the proposed ordinance "on the window at city hall the morning of the council meeting," and informed the mayor that the Macon City Code does not support the merger of the drinking water plant & the sewage treatment plants. This snafu is responsible for the money the city wasted adding the $80 million dollar water plants bond issue to the November ballot. Our votes will be counted but will not be certified.
Public access gives residents a way to check what they are being told against the written rules.
Moonline Open Code is our contribution to making that possible.
Our version is a Public Reference Edition, compiled from photographs of the library collection. It remains incomplete and is not the city’s official code. Readers should verify current requirements with the City Clerk, particularly where later ordinances may have changed the photographed text.
Those limitations are stated openly. So is our purpose: to make the material available now while we continue adding the remaining pages.
Click Here to Visit the Moonline Open Code page on the Macon Moonline Investigates website. Search the available material, read it at your convenience, and share it with anyone who needs access.
There is no subscription charge and no payment required.
This is our gift to the citizens of Macon.
They are your city’s laws. You should be able to read them for free, whenever you wish!
Join the conversation on the Macon Moonline Investigates Facebook Page.
Regards Maconites,
By R. Dominique - Editor
