This story was edited at 10 p.m. on Tuesday.

The Urbana City Council will discuss at its Monday night meeting if it should accept a $22.5 million grant to build a fiber-optic broadband network.

According to an overview of the project proposal by Diane Marlin, Ward 7, the broadband network would increase the speed and capacity to connect to the community’s Internet, telephone and video signals. The overview stated that broadband connectivity will extend to 4,600 homes in lower-income neighborhoods in Urbana and Champaign.

The grant money would be distributed between the cities of Urbana and Champaign and the University. Urbana would receive $350,000 from the grant and would be expected to contribute $555,000 over the next three fiscal years, according to the plan’s overview.

“The pro is that we get a (fiber-optic) backbone to the community,” said Charlie Smyth, Ward 1. “We bring broadband to clientele that normally wouldn’t get access to it. Having the core (fiber-optic) backbone puts us at a competitive advantage, making the community even more attractive.”

Smyth compared Internet connectivity to a water hose: the bigger the hose is, the faster the water would be able to flow through it.

In the plan overview, Marlin mentioned that big broadband connectivity will be good for the future of Urbana. She added that the current Internet network is not good enough, and the city needs a more dependable Internet system that will meet the increasing demand of the city.

Some objections to the broadband project plan include: project losses amounting to $200,000 to $300,000 per year over the next 10 years for not selling Internet service in the underserved neighborhoods, the possibility of the state of Illinois not fulfilling its $3.5 million contribution to the plan and a $100 million additional cost to connect the entire Champaign-Urbana community.

The deciding factor will be whether the city can organize its finances to maintain the broadband system once the grant money is spent. The money came from federal stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Agency.

Dennis Roberts, Ward 5, said that the city submitted three different grants, but failed to receive two of them. The grant that was awarded to the city will be used to lay the infrastructure of the network.

“The clock started ticking on Tuesday to decide whether or not to accept (the grant money),” Marlin said.

There is a 30 day deadline for the city on whether to accept the stimulus money for this expansion of the broadband network.