Letter: Homer Glen Mayor Discusses Upcoming Referendum

HOMER GLEN, IL — The information below was sent as a letter to the editor from Village of Homer Glen Mayor George Yukich.

Dear Homer Glen Residents,

When Homer Glen incorporated on April 17, 2001, the Village took ownership of its streets located within its new corporate boundaries.

As a brand-new Village that started out large in size – with more than 20,000 residents and more than 100 miles of streets – Homer Glen entered into an intergovernmental agreement with Homer Township to maintain our roads. For nearly 20 years, the partnership has worked well with Village residents paying taxes to the Township for street repairs, equipment and salaries for maintenance staff.

From the very start, Village leaders had sought a plan for it to grow and ultimately become an autonomous municipality. That meant achieving home-rule status (2012), securing its own utilities (2012); building a Village Hall (2016); and opening Heritage Park (2018). All of these steps demonstrated the Village’s growth and legal authority to not only make decisions for its residents, but to protect them and to ensure that it established a high degree of accountability and transparency.

The plan also included eventually taking jurisdiction over its streets. No other municipality the size of Homer Glen allows for the Township or a Township Road District to control funding or maintenance of its roads. But the real reason for this “transfer of stewardship” is to eliminate the uncertainty it would create and the increased costs that taxpayers may have to pay if required to create a new public works department in the near future.

The intergovernmental agreement with the Road District is not without risk. Earlier this summer when Village leaders approached the Township about the idea of a transfer, the Township Board hastily put a referendum on the Nov. 3 ballot asking voters if they wanted to abolish the Road District. But the wording of the ballot question can be confusing and does not tell the whole story. If approved with a “YES” vote, the Township will take control of Village streets and the Road District’s funds, assets and staff.

Approval of the referendum would also give the Township the ability to end the intergovernmental agreement with the Village within a year, cutting off all resources and forcing the Village to establish a new public works department quickly from scratch, costing more than $14 million in taxpayer dollars.

If the referendum is not approved, by a “NO” vote, the Village will move forward with the transfer and take control of our local roads. We will also work with the other communities, including the Township, Lockport and New Lenox, on a fair distribution of the value of the road district’s assets.

The Village believes that because 135 of the 153 miles of streets that the Township would control are located in and owned by Homer Glen, the Village should have authority to make funding and maintenance decisions pertaining to the roads it already owns. Furthermore, residents living within the boundaries of the Village have been paying most of the taxes into the system to buy trucks, plows and equipment since the Road District began.

In September, we voted unanimously to approve a resolution exploring the transfer of stewardship. We feel the transfer marks the next essential step for our community to take and will enable us to manage and control development while preserving our heritage in a way the people of Homer Glen desire.

Sincerely,

Mayor George Yukich