PROVIDENCE — The leaders of an informal coalition gather around a long table in an architectural office in Providence’s Jewelry District, weighing how to change the City Council to match a changed city.

It’s a blend of the East Side and the South Side, united around the belief that the 15-member, ward-based Providence City Council needs to incorporate at-large members elected by the entire city to be both diverse and modern. This coalition is backing a plan to redraw the ward lines and create a new City Council of 12 ward-based members and 3 at-large members.

The group, including some of the most prominent leaders from the city’s black and Southeast Asian communities, has met in Stephen Durkee’s architecture office every Wednesday for months.

They say they want at-large members to add a citywide perspective and to create a focus on education across ward lines.

But underlying their effort is the concern that without at-large members, whole ethnic groups might be shut out of the City Council as the Latino population explodes in wards that have long elected whites or blacks.

Meanwhile, some of the strongest opposition to a change has come from Latino council members, representing the community that some say could see the biggest electoral gains if the ward lines remain as they are.

Mayor David N. Cicilline, who has thrown his support behind the 12-3 plan, buys the argument that at-large representation is needed to preserve the voices of Providence’s blacks and Southeast Asians.

“I think there are distinct ethnic groups that don’t exist in sufficient numbers in a particular ward to ever be on the Providence City Council, but I think the voters of Providence are incredibly fair minded –– and will have a great interest in ensuring that the diversity of our city is reflected in the council,” he said. “And I think at-large councilors are the only way that that can happen.”

Luis Aponte, a Latino South Providence councilman who has been the harshest critic of the plan, sees it as a threat to diversity on the council.

“It has a serious potential to dilute minority representation on the City Council,” he said, arguing that running for office is expensive — and moneyed, white, East Side candidates are the most likely to be elected.

“If you look at it from a jaundiced eye… the most affluent among us in our city think that they need more representation,” he said.

He dismissed the argument that ward-only elections could lead to a huge Latino power block in 2010.

“I don’t think that there is that much cohesion amongst Latinos to think that we’re going to take over the City Council. I don’t see it happening. Not in the next election at least,” he said.

IF THE WAY a city governs itself speaks to its self-image, then Providence’s 15 neighborhood-based City Council wards evoke a city that sees itself as larger than it is, and that defines people by what neighborhood they come from.

As the city’s demographics change, however, that network of clearly defined neighborhoods marking borders between racial and ethnic groups and social classes is weakening.

And the dramatic rise of the Latino population — at least 36 percent of the city, according to 2006 American Community Survey estimates — has changed the political game in a city where the once-dominant Italian culture no longer has much sway beyond Atwells Avenue.

Still, this minority-majority city is represented by a large City Council which is still predominantly white and male in a city that is not. Of the 15 council members, 11 are white, 3 are Latino, and 1 is black. Only 2 are female.

Cicilline said at-large seats are commonplace nationwide, and especially in New England. In Rhode Island, both types are found: Cranston’s nine-member council has three at-large members. Warwick’s nine members are all ward-based.

The plan’s supporters provided data showing that of the 15 cities closest in population to Providence nationwide — including state capitals Little Rock, Ark., and Jackson, Miss. — 12 elect at-large council members. None elects more than 12 council members total.

According to the group, councils with at-large members are more diverse.

“We’ve reached a point where the issues are much larger than ward-based issues,” said Rochelle Lee, a black 12-3 coalition member who is a lawyer with Bates & Hall.

But the racial issue also continues to push to the fore. For blacks and Southeast Asians, who make up 20 percent of the population in many wards but are not a majority anywhere, at-large representation seems like a way to ensure their voices could be heard.

“We have a lot of different kinds of people in this city. The Southeast Asian community — they don’t live in geographically contiguous areas. It’ll be very difficult for them to gain representation,” said East Side Councilman Cliff Wood, who is white, and who introduced the 12-3 proposal before the City Council.

“That’s the same with the black community,” said Durkee, who is white.

WHEN THE 12-3 GROUP met in Durkee’s office on Wednesday, possibly for the last time, there was a sense of urgency in the room. A City Council public hearing on the plan is scheduled for tomorrow night, with the hope of getting the proposal on the November ballot. The council’s ordinance committee will hold the hearing at 6 p.m. tomorrow at City Hall. Then the ordinance committee will decide Thursday whether to send the proposal to the full council.

If the committee doesn’t pass it to the council, the change won’t happen this year. The deadline for submitting ballot measures to the state is Aug. 6.

And with several longtime council members expected to retire in 2010, the feeling around the table was that it’s now or never. It is unlikely the council would vote to redistrict the city and force existing council members to face one another to hold onto their seats, unless several council members planned to leave already.

But the 12-3 coalition isn’t the only group aware of the potential retirements.

Councilmen Aponte and Miguel Luna, both Latino, have led the push against a change to the ward structure.

Luna called the idea “stupid” before pulling back and labeling it simply unwarranted.

“There’s no need for it. That’s not going to fix the problems in the city,” Luna said. “I think we’re breaking something that’s fixed so we can fix it again.”

Aponte finds the idea of citywide council members insulting to begin with.

“Those that would be elected at large would have some broader view, and think more globally — that argument suggests that those who are represented to elect wards have a more myopic view and are somehow tethered to their wards. Which is insulting to those of us that represent wards,” he said.

He also feared that cutting the number of wards actually means that minorities could be corralled into minority-heavy districts that actually reduce their influence.

“We’re reducing the number of ward seats, and we’d have to redraw the lines so that we have three less reps. That has the potential to gerrymander, in which you create districts with high minority representation,” he said.

More pressing, he said, is the fear that running for citywide office would be prohibitively expensive for most — encouraging candidates from the city’s wealthiest, whitest area: the East Side.

“It becomes an issue of affluence. How many people in the city can raise that kind of money and can raise that amount of money to be competitive?” Aponte said.

That last concern arouses the ire of 12-3 coalition member Michael Van Leesten, a longtime civil-rights activist who is also chairman of the Black Repertory Company.

“The whole notion that a black candidate couldn’t raise money citywide, it gets to a stereotype that is yesteryear,” Van Leesten said.

A second at-large proposal, to add two citywide council members to the existing 15-member council for a total of 17, is also up for a hearing tomorrow night, but has received considerably less attention than the 12-3 plan.

The debate has played out mostly as an inside game so far, but if the City Council does vote to put it on the ballot, it would probably set off five months of public discussion on the topic. That’s what Cicilline wants, saying the voters deserve the chance to decide. To Aponte, the time isn’t right for any of it. “It seems to me,” he said, “that this is a solution looking for a problem.”

dbarbari@projo.com