St. Charles City Council Kicks New Ward Map Back to Task Force

St. Charles City Council members will take another crack at a new ward map.

A revised map presented for approval Tuesday night was sent back for further revisions. 

Aldermen requested the Redistricting Task Force, composed of several St. Charles alderman and formed to redraw the city's ward boundaries following the 2010 census, take geography into greater factor when drawing the new wad lines.

“We get to do this once every 10 years," 2nd Ward Alderman Cliff Carrignan said Tuesday. "I think it’s important we do it right."

An initial motion to approve the new ward map failed in a 3-7 vote. This version of the map drew critique over how much variance in population it allowed between wards. During previous task force meeting, the map lines were drawn so that the population of each of the city's five wards were within one percent of each other. Advice from legal counsel indicted that having a smaller difference between wards would be easier to defend if challenged in court.

A few on the City Council wished to see existing geography, such as the Fox River or major arteries, be more of a factor in determining where lines were drawn. Dan Stellato, one of the two 1st Ward alderman, said Aurora has a varience of up to 10 percent between its wards and pushed for another look that gave greater weight the city's physical layout.

Bill Turner, one of the three Task Force members and a 3rd Ward Alderman, said they put together the proposed make using the one percent rule and hadn't factored in geography.

On top of the requested reconsideration, the City Council also voted to add to more members to the Task Force. Prior to Tuesday, the task force had been comprised of City Council members only from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th wards. Now, City Council representatives from the 1st and 5th wards will serve on the Task Force.

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