Summer 2001

The Vote for Green Towns

Story by Debra Shore| Photographs by Ronald W. Kurowski

On Tuesday, April 17, 2001, two weeks after a stunning victory at the polls, Homer Glen became a town. Since the mid-1980s, the residents of Homer Township in Will County had been seeking to gain some control of their future. It’s a tranquil place, Homer Township, but municipalities were encroaching from three directions. Nearby towns and developers found local folks "in the way of development" in many parts of the region, and local residents had long been trying – and failing – to do anything about it.

Founders of a green town: Homer Glen Mayor Ross Petrizzo, campaigner Debra Norvil, and Trustees Margaret Sabo and Laurel Ward.

What the people did here this time seems to be unprecedented. Instead of waiting to get gobbled up by pro-development municipalities, this large unincorporated area went ahead and created a "defensive town." The newly incorporated Homer Glen encompasses nearly 20 square miles. That’s enough room for a lot of development and a lot of open land.

The election victory in April was especially sweet because it came after a long series of similar attempts, dating back to the mid-1980s. All prior attempts had been rejected by Will County committees, voted down by the Will County Board, or had failed at the ballot box.

This time, however, recent annexations, overcrowding in the schools, and the striking contrast of high-density development with Homer Township’s rural setting had become obvious. By organizing a broad grassroots campaign, the pro-incorporation forces were victorious. Resoundingly so. They won with more than 66 percent of the vote.

"This was a defensive incorporation," said Margaret Sabo, one of the stalwarts and now one of the new town’s trustees. "We wanted to keep what we had. We wanted to keep the farmers farming, protect people with horses and other animals, and not be overwhelmed by the conflicting type of developments that others had in mind for our community."

Homer Glen isn’t particularly easy to get to. No major road runs through it, no commuter trains stop there. People have to want to go there and, over the years, many did – seeking a life at some remove from urban bustle, a life in the country. "It’s really an inconvenience to live out here," said Gail Snyder, a new trustee of Homer Glen, "but people choose to live here because the trade-off is worth it."

"When you come in to Homer," said Township Supervisor Bud Fazio, "you can actually feel the temperature change."

Historic accounts describe the prairies of Homer as "...the most beautiful that the enthusiastic Yankee had seen. They were just rolling enough to resemble the billows of the ocean after a storm had passed, and the thick grass, three or four feet high, overtopped with fragrant blossoms .... Mrs. Mason said she used to take rides across the prairies, when the wildflowers were as high as the top of the wagon, and as the oxen tramped over and the wagon wheels crushed them, they yielded a sweeter perfume than ‘Price’s Unique Extracts’ or the distilled essence of the richest exotics." (History of Will County, by George H. Woodruff, 1878.)

One early settler was blacksmith John Lane, who also invented the steel moldboard plow that permitted farmers to "break" the prairie sod. Unlike John Deere, however, Lane never patented his invention. Thus his influence, while profound, led to modest profits.

Homer Township, sparsely settled, became home to cornfields, horse farms, and rural lifestyles. Over time, the Forest Preserve District of Will County acquired significant parcels, including 947-acre Messenger Woods. In the last 40 years, development of estate-size parcels and construction of subdivisions began, many with small lots and others with lot sizes an acre or larger.

In the fall of 1998, voters in Homer Township approved an $8 million bond referendum for the purchase of open space. We’re willing to pony up our own money, they were saying, to keep land open for wildlife, woods, and streams. Still, over the years, the people of Homer Township have watched what seemed like a relentless march of housing and commercial development consuming farmland, filling in the open vistas, rendering their sense of community vulnerable. Nearby Lockport kept annexing subdivisions, and builders kept erecting high-density housing developments on small lots. New Lenox also annexed land, extending its reach and encroaching more and more into the countryside.

"A lot of our problem was that we were unincorporated," Sabo said. "We didn’t have any statutory authority. People were getting more and more frustrated. Our taxes were going up, the schools were getting overcrowded, the farmers were disappearing. We had one home on a five-acre lot right next to six homes and a multifamily building on one acre. If we had zoning authority, we would have had control of development," Sabo added. "But as an unincorporated area we couldn’t do anything! We asked Lockport to transition to larger lot sizes and provide protection with adequate buffers because of the contrast in zoning and they didn’t do either."

Prior attempts to incorporate into villages with proposed names of Homer Prairie, Goodings Grove, and Messenger Woods all fell to defeat. Opponents argued that taxes would increase. Yet taxes increased anyway! Opponents had argued that neighboring towns would never come that far – yet Lockport and New Lenox kept gobbling up more and more of unincorporated Homer Township through annexation. Lemont, too, began to set its sights on annexing part of Homer Township. The issue became one of local control.

"Through incorporation we can gain control of development and the effect it has on our schools, infrastructure, environment, economy and taxes," said Laurel Ward, chairman of the campaign to incorporate, now a new trustee for the village, and mother of three. "We can recover money that should be available to our community. We can identify our own economic corridors and encourage commercial enterprise that is consistent with the character of our community and no one can ever again take them from us. If the encroachment of surrounding towns is not stopped now, it will only be a matter of time before Homer Township is nothing but a memory."

In January, the Will County Board voted to allow the incorporation referendum onto the April ballot. That left little more than two months for proponents to organize a campaign. Working out of a modest office next to Ace Hardware in a strip mall at 159th near Will-Cook Road, a growing swell of volunteers produced flyers and newsletters, distributed signs, illustrated a series of maps showing the march of sprawl across the township, posted Top Ten Reasons to Incorporate on a Web site (www.homerglen.org), organized talks to community groups, and tried to reach every subdivision within the unborn town’s boundaries.

They put together a 15-minute videotape presenting the arguments in favor of incorporation and spent the weekend before the election passing out 3,000 tapes door-to-door.

"What sent many people over the edge was when they saw the annexations and some of the construction that went up," said longtime resident Bud Fazio. "For many it was the development near Bell Rd and 143rd St. with high-rise buildings and high density. It had been a sod farm and everybody enjoyed the view."

In effect, the citizens who banded together to press for incorporation were saying, ‘We know and accept that change is going to happen. (After all, developers already own about eight square miles here.) But we think we can make it happen in a very different way. We think we can preserve what is dear to us and develop our communities in a responsible way. There’s no reason Homer Glen can’t have a balance of open spaces and development the way other places could have been. There’s no reason Homer Glen can’t strive for developments to be designed in harmony with open space and nature. We want change to reflect our values and the character of our community.’

At times the campaign bore not-so-faint echoes of revolutionary zeal. The Committee to Incorporate even circulated a sign calling for "Equal Rights for Homer Glen":

"Through Incorporation we will win the Right of Self-Determination giving our Community the ability to Control Development and other Local Issues enabling us to Improve and Preserve Our Quality of Life!"

"I was new to the community," said Therese Lombard. "I’d only been here about a year. But I’d been reading about the campaign in the newspapers and getting angrier and angrier. I’ve never done anything like this before." Therese showed up at the campaign office and volunteered to help. Soon her husband and nine year-old son got involved, too. "It became a family effort," Lombard said.

Three local newspapers – The Star, The Sun, and the Daily Southtown – endorsed the incorporation plan, and proponents felt the momentum heading their way. "We never relaxed," said Nancy Strack, now a township trustee. "A lot of us had never worked on a campaign before, so it felt good."

While feeling justifiably exuberant, those who led the campaign to create Homer Glen had little time to savor their victory. Now they had a town to run! Almost immediately they activated the phone tree, drumming up people to sign petitions for a slate of village officials. "We needed 100 signatures per petition and more than 200 people came through the door," Lombard remembered. "People were standing outside in the rain, waiting to help."

On April 17, Will County Circuit Judge Herman Haase certified the results of the election – in effect issuing Homer Glen’s birth certificate – and appointed a board of trustees, a mayor and clerk. On April 23, 150 people showed up for the town’s first meeting in the cafeteria at Homer Junior High School. "They just came to see history being made," said Sabo.

Town officials are now working to secure intergovernmental agreements with the county sheriff’s department for police protection and with the township for road service. But land use, all agree, is the key.

"Now that we have Homer Glen, we control development," said new trustee Gail Snyder. "We’re not opposed to development. There’s plenty of money to be made here. We just didn’t like the way Lockport did it."

So the new leaders of Homer Glen, backed by a legion of volunteers, will craft a land use plan and zoning ordinances that reflect their values, that seek to preserve open space, that reflect the character of their community and preserve a variety of lifestyles. It is a daunting task. They are absolutely thrilled to have the chance.

"How often in your life," said 76-year-old Bill Karn, "do you get to start a town?"

Two thirds of Homer Glen is still open land.