DeKalb and NIU combined are set to receive $11.5 million for road work.

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert passed through DeKalb to announce the House’s passing of the Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users. The bill is currently moving through the Senate.

DeKalb is set to receive $4 million of the $8 million it applied for.

Annie Glidden Road will be widened from Lincoln Highway out to the Route 88 junction, he said. More durable traffic lighting will also be constructed.

The engineering is all worked out, he said, and now they have only to wait for the funding.

For NIU, the $284 billion bill allocates $7.5 million to create an infrastructure on the largely undeveloped 230 acres where the Convocation Center and Center for Family Violence buildings sit.

But that dollar amount [$7.5 million] may change, and for the better, said Kathy Buettner, executive director of state and federal relations.

NIU needs $14.5 million to complete the infrastructure project. Buettner said she will meet with Illinois senators to discuss when would be the best time to work the additional $7 million into the bill.

There are two options: either the money will be added while the Senate is discussing the bill, or during the conference committee. Conference committees serve to reconcile the differences between the bills the House and Senate pass.

The bill should have been passed in 2004 but the conference committee was unable to reconcile the $43 billion difference between the two house bills.

NIU purchased the land as a precautionary measure to ensure that if the university had to grow they had the option available, said Robert Boey, then the chair of the NIU Board of Trustees.