URBANA — Members of Champaign County's special redistricting commission decided Wednesday to forward up to three map plans to the county board in their next round of proposals.

The commission also decided to ask its staff to revise three existing map plans known as 6F, 3D and 1F by its next meeting, scheduled for May 16. At that time the commission will review the revised maps and decide which ones it wants to recommend to the county board for adoption before a June 30 deadline.

One of the issues facing the commission, it learned Wednesday, is that its budget with the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission limits it to only five more map revisions before it runs out of money.

Commission members opted to keep two possible revisions "in the pocket," as commission chair Rick Winkel put it, in case the county board rejects all of the recommended district maps. By law, the commission is limited to three rounds of map proposals.

"We use all five maps now and we're out," Winkel told the commission. "We'd have none left. We'd be out of our budget."

The county board already has rejected one map advanced by the commission.

Champaign Democrat Alan Kurtz, a member of the county board as well as the redistricting commission, said he believed the county board "would come up with more money for us to do it."

But no other commission members seemed willing to take that chance.

The commission instructed its staff to attempt to create maps with minimal population variance, with the creation of minority majority influence districts, and with four rural districts.