DeKalb city leaders seek to incentivize bus drivers, support staff with increased pay

DeKALB – DeKalb city leaders approved this week a plan to increase wages for the city’s transit bus drivers and support staff, in the hopes of recruiting and retaining more staff to stay.

The DeKalb City Council this week voted, 6-0, to authorize amendments to its contract with the city’s transit provider, Transdev Services, Inc.. Second Ward Alderwoman Barb Larson and Fourth Ward Alderman Greg Perkins were absent.

The city hopes the increased wages – boosting the starting pay to between $20 and $23.50 an hour based on length of service – will address the shortage of drivers and support staff the transit system is noting, officials said. The increase is effective Oct. 1 and run through Dec. 31, 2023, according to city documents. An annual raise would also be included in the new wages, documents show.

Transit Director Mike Neuenkirchen said the city currently has about 40 bus operators but is ideally in need of 52 drivers to meet the existing transit service levels.

But the city would like to start meeting future ridership service needs such as those on DeKalb’s south side, officials said.

Neuenkirchen said the city’s transit system needs to start expanding.

“Right now, they’re significantly understaffed,” he said.

City staff examined where the transit system wages stands in comparison to similar small urban transit systems in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.

The average starting wages for a heavy-duty bus driver of a small-urban transit system is $19.32, according to city documents. In DeKalb, the pay starts at $17.25 based on length of service.

“That would put us at or just slightly above the midpoint of what we find in the way of what private employers are doing and also what other transit systems are doing,” Nicklas said.

DeKalb City Manager Bill Nicklas said the city is equipped to handle the increased costs that boosting bus driver and support staff pay would involve.

“We have other sources of revenue that help with our annual outlay, including monies that come over from Northern Illinois University,” Nicklas said.

The increases will be provided, in part, through a matching $6,117,668 state grant for fiscal year 2023, after a 6-0 City Council vote. The grant will come the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Downstate Operating Assistance Program.

Nicklas said the $6.1 million is an increase of $496,272 over last year’s assistance program allocation for the city’s transit provider.

“And we requested that amount of money because we anticipated that the city, in its position of contracting for the services that are provided either fixed route or variable, our paratransit would probably have to fund higher wages this year,” Nicklas said. “This is even before what we have seen happening in terms of the cost of living here and elsewhere around the state and around the country.”

Third Ward Alderman Tracy Smith, who works with the Voluntary Action Center’s transit program, lauded the investment to the transit system and said the city was lucky to get this assistance from the state.

“I think we’ve all talked about our bigger partners on the south end of town need service, so this is a win-win all the way around,” Smith said.

Nicklas echoed that sentiment.

“With this amount of money, we can proceed confidently into the state fiscal year which is upon us,” Nicklas said.