The Geneva City Council voted Monday to approve a new ward map that city staff said makes the populations of the wards more equal.
The last time Geneva changed the ward map was in December 1996, and since that time, the city has grown by nearly 5,000 people, according to City Administrator Stephanie Dawkins. At an Aug. 5 City Council Committee of the Whole meeting, she said that population growth has caused Geneva’s five wards to not represent equal populations of the city.
The biggest example of unequal ward population, she said, was the 4th Ward representing nearly 27% of the city’s residents.
Three options were presented to the City Council at that Aug. 5 meeting, and the chosen option was approved at a City Council meeting on Monday. The vote was 8-2 with City Council members Brad Kosirog and Richard Marks voting no.
Kosirog said he had complaints about the ward map redistricting process, including that it was moving too quickly and that the city should have sought more public input before the change, among other concerns.
Marks said he had no problem with the new map itself, but was concerned that the change was happening too close to when people would begin to gather signatures to run for City Council. That timeframe began on Aug. 20.
Geneva’s 2025 Consolidated Election Candidate Guide was revised the day after the vote to include the new ward map. The guide can be found on the city’s website at geneva.il.us
The new map, which went into effect immediately, was designed to have a near equal distribution of population but ensure exactly two currently elected City Council members with staggered terms live in each ward, according to Dawkins’ presentation on Aug. 5.
Per city code, each ward elects two aldermen to the City Council.
However, the map change does mean that two currently elected City Council members, Mike Bruno and Robert Swanson, will move wards.
Bruno, who formerly represented the 1st Ward, will now represent the 5th Ward. Swanson, who formerly represented the 5th Ward, will now represent the 1st Ward.
Both of their terms expire in 2025, according to Dawkins’ Aug. 5 presentation.
The biggest geographical difference in the new ward map is the 5th Ward, which covers less land to the north but extends much further west to incorporate areas that were previously in the 1st and 2nd wards and a small piece of the 4th Ward.
The 4th Ward previously had the most population of any ward, so it is much smaller. The 2nd Ward now represents much of what used to be the west side of the 4th Ward.
The 1st Ward now extends east of the Fox River, but much of the land it used to represent to the southwest is now in the 5th Ward.
The 3rd Ward now extends further south into the area previously represented by the 5th Ward.
Swanson took issue with one part of the map, where it split a neighborhood between two different wards. He proposed to change the map to fully include that neighborhood within the same ward.
Other aldermen disagreed, saying that the change would make the wards’ populations more unequal and that splitting a neighborhood between different wards was not a bad thing.
The map amendment was voted down 3-7.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
