The City of Milwaukee is on the hunt for a new flag. Yes, again.

Aldermen at City Hall moved to go back to the drawing board Thursday, opting to look for a new designer to come up with a new city flag.

That decision came despite a yearslong effort by advocates of the "People's Flag of Milwaukee," who have been pushing to make their streamlined design the city's official flag.

After Thursday's unanimous Steering and Rules Committee vote, the issue is set to be taken up by the full Common Council next month.

If adopted, the resolution would direct the city clerk to issue a request for qualifications and a request for proposals to design a new official city flag.

For those worried that the flag saga will continue for years to come, the resolution also sets an end date. It says that the completion of community outreach, design of the flag and presentation to the council for approval of a flag design should be no later than May 31, 2020.

The latest search comes despite the work of People's Flag proponents led by local graphic designer, Steve Kodis, who began his mission to create a new flag for the city in 2015.

He launched a website chronicling the movement and created a citywide contest.

A design known as "Sunrise over the Lake" by Robert Lenz won the 2016 contest and has since become ubiquitous around the city — appearing on bicycles, beer cans and bottles, Koss headphones, cars and Milwaukee Brewers baseball caps.

The aldermen's vote came over the objections of Lenz, who discouraged them from "doing this whole thing from scratch again."

"This flag isn't really going away. It's tattooed on people's skin at this point, it's flying from homes and businesses throughout Milwaukee and beyond, it's used by our sports teams, it's in public art installations throughout the city," Lenz said. "And it's really an incredible thing that the flag has become a part of our culture in such a short amount of time. So the process might not have been perfect ... but one thing that you can say is that it was effective."

The committee's decision followed the recommendations of the Arts Board, which determined that a new flag was necessary but suggested a different process for finding one.

Council members also expressed concerns about how inclusive the People's Flag process had been.

"It seemed pretty clear to me that there was a lack of satisfaction with the outreach that was done," City Clerk Jim Owczarski said.

Contact Mary Spicuzza at (414) 224-2324 or mary.spicuzza@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MSpicuzzaMJS or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mary.spicuzza.