On the morning of Friday, March 1st, the City of Muncie hosted the 2024 State of the City event at Cornerstone Center for the Arts.
The annual event looks to touch on Muncie's current progress as a city, and where it is looking to better itself moving forward.
Muncie Mayor Dan Ridenour began his address to the audience full of community members and public officials with the phrase, “Here’s where we’re growing and where we’re going.”
Ridenour started his speech with the notion that he will touch on four main topics; infrastructure, public safety, quality of place and quality of life.
Within the infrastructure section, Ridenour addressed the issues with roads within the city. He said his team's commitment has been very successful, investing in equipment to re-paving neighborhood streets and roads.
When speaking on public safety, Ridenour described the issue as “Pretty much police and fire.”
He said that behind the scenes, the city has improved safety and amenities for firefighters. For police, they’ve created a community engagement team and a social worker program.
These initiatives look to improve recruitment and better community relations with the Muncie Police Department.
Last, the city is building a crisis center, a place for people to head instead before they act with the intent of hurting themselves or others.
For the quality of place, Ridenour spoke on the importance of drawing people into Muncie, while simultaneously improving the quality of place for current residents.
The Mayor spoke on the importance and improvements within the park system being made, citing the replacement of old and broken equipment. He also spoke on last year's opening of the Cook Family Education Center and its current year-round success for local families.
He then noted the planting of over 1,000 trees last year through the One thousand Trees in One-thousand-days initiative and the city's continued commitment to planting trees. Ridenour said that Muncie has received a grant of 2 million dollars spread over the next 5 years to continue to plant trees in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
To end the section, he reinforced the commitment and progress made within local housing development.
Ridenour then briefly spoke on quality of life.
The mayor said they are continuing to give out millions of dollars in loans to small businesses as he wants to make Muncie an ‘entrepreneurial hotbed.’ Along with this, he mentioned the growth of businesses owned by women and minorities.
Ridenour ended the address by thanking various members within departments in the city of Muncie along with different council members.
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