Urbana City Council members are now exploring a second proposed ward map following Monday’s committee meeting. Bill Brown, resident of Ward 4 in Urbana, is responsible for the proposed map and presented it to council members at the meeting.

His map’s main feature is a change in the layout of Ward 6 in southeast Urbana, where he said “there is a possibility that within a few years it could become a minority-majority district.”

His new version of Ward 6 would help to centralize a minority community that is currently split among four wards — Wards 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Council members generally agreed that Brown’s map would be viable, but many also questioned the merit in such a large change to wards that are performing well. Eric Jakobsson, Ward 2, said an advantage of the originally proposed map from Mayor Laurel Prussing allows for “a continuation of representation.”

Robert Lewis, Ward 3, said the issue is best left to residents of the new Ward 6 because either map would work.

“Let them decide if (the new map) is something they want to move forward with,” he said.

Diane Marlin, Ward 7, noted that Brown’s map would spread further growth in east Urbana among three wards, as opposed to the current map’s single ward. She said this is why Ward 6 has had much greater growth than other wards since the current map was drawn.

Mayor Laurel Prussing pointed out the difficulty to predict population growth by citing an eastern shift in Champaign’s population center due to high-rise construction on campus. She noted that Urbana strives for population in-fill, which Charlie Smyth, Ward 1, said his ward has seen. His ward — encompassing a portion of campus and the center of Urbana — has grown at the average rate.

City council ended the discussion by sending both maps to next week’s council meeting without recommendations.

In other business, council members defeated a possible tiered pricing system for stormwater runoff fees a second time. Smyth reintroduced the discussion after the mayor asked council members to reconsider the pricing system.

The tiered system was meant to make fees more equitable and fair to residents, but Marlin noted that properties with greater impervious areas could also belong to lower income households.

Smyth, who voted against the tiered system, said a truly fair system would charge each individual property by the square foot of impervious area, rather than have properties fall within a range of impervious areas.

“If you really want to make it equitable, (the rate) should be per square foot,” he said.

Council members ultimately agreed with recommendations by city staff and the stormwater advisory committee and voted 4-3 to move forward with a flat fee.