Wheaton rejects Pace route funding request

The Wheaton City Council on Monday unanimously rejected a $30,000 funding request that would help pay for an existing Pace bus route that goes through town.

However, officials from the agency that oversees Pace Bus Route 714 say it is “profoundly premature” to suggest that could mean the route’s dissolution.

Tam Kutzmark, the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference’s transportation and planning director, said planned summer service reductions based on College of DuPage’s summer break and upcoming survey results will contribute to any response to the move made by Wheaton at its planning session Monday.

Additionally, she said, the response from Wheaton was a “completely fair assessment” in light of the turmoil in Springfield, which has threatened recently to take money from local municipalities.

“It flavors how they are making local decisions,” she said. “We are going to have to sit down with our other partners.”

The bus route starts in downtown Wheaton, makes its way to College of DuPage, then west on 22nd Street to Naperville Road and past Danada Square. It then travels down Ogden Avenue toward the Naperville Metra Station.

The five-year-old route has been paid for by several partners, including Pace, Wheaton, Naperville and DuPage County. College of DuPage kicked in $30,000 this year for the first time.

The money allocated to the route, which comes primarily from federal grants, is expected to be about $591,000 this year. That is down from the $873,000 at its peak in 2007-08, and up from the $332,000 budget in its first year. Wheaton last contributed in 2008-09.

That same year, Pace was forced by budget constraints to give up its plan to pick up the entire local share.

Kutzmark said Pace most likely will fully fund the route next year, and it is now only a matter of finding the money to pay for it this year.

Councilman Phil Suess questioned whether the city should be funding something that the Regional Transportation Authority has been charged with funding for years, and said a 0.25 percent RTA tax increase in 2009 was supposed to pay for these routes.

“Part of that was under the auspices of increased funding of transportation,” he said. “This is a regional question and, appropriately, the funding should come from the county ... I know money is tight and everything else, but it comes down to an appropriate use of money. There is money this county is collecting for transportation. I am skeptical if that money is being spent on transportation.”