Greener Homewood Party

04/08/2025

News you won't see on the Village of Homewood's page:

The Harwood TIF Hearing looks like it will be continued to the end of May, but they will still have the hearing. Which means there will still be opportunity to ask questions and provide comments about the development. There are so many questions that this TIF raises... like since this is a residential development, how much money from the TIF will go to schools and libraries (a state requirement)?

Why is St. John Neumann's included in the TIF? Churches are tax-exempt, which means they will only be collecting TIF funding, not contributing to it? Is this how the village plans to pay for the lease of the parking lot?

Why are we doing another deal with a developer who is already selling the Hartford building? Obviously, this is a flipper; not someone with the long-term best interest of the village in mind.

Please come out to the board meeting tonight and give public comment. Izaak Walton is still being polluted, disastrous TIFs are still being planned, and the community is NOT BEING HEARD!

Make your voice heard. Tonight.

04/07/2025

Greener Supporters-- We would love to collect your yard signs to re-use. Please send your address in the DMs, and we will have someone stop by to grab them!

Send a message to learn more

04/04/2025

Please join us on Tuesday! Are you unhappy with TIFs? Are you dissatisfied with the status quo? To you think that the selling village hall parking is a bad idea? Do you want your voice heard? Are you unhappy with the results of the elections? This is your chance!

Show the village that you care. Come out Tuesday at 7! Be on time to ask questions at the hearing. And stay to give public comment!

Send a message to learn more

04/03/2025

Though we would have hoped to represent the village as trustees, our work is far from complete: This is a movement, not a campaign!

The issues and policies that we ran on and advocated for are still vital community issues, and we will not stop fighting for the residents of Homewood.

People want town halls. People want environmental policies. People want the pollution stopped and remediated from the ponds at Izaak Walton. People want to support the small, locally-owned businesses, instead of large corporations. People want more parking and more accessible parking in downtown Homewood. People want to have streets that are safer for pedestrians and cyclists. These are concrete asks that will improve the lives of residents that the current administration has done nothing to address.

These won’t be issues that the Greater Homewood Party will take any action on. As Hofeld said after the election results came in, “I think we pretty much had our finger on the pulse of the community. We responded accordingly and … well, there’s the results.” They plan to change nothing.

We want to thank the people of Homewood who supported us with donations, volunteering, love, and advocacy for the party and the issues we stand for. We could not have come this far without you. We ran against a 27-year political machine that entered election season with $40K. And we won more than 30% of the vote.

The takeaways:
----VOTER TURNOUT increased almost 10%, from 14.73% in 2023 to 23.3%.
----Greener Homewood Party Candidates received about 30% of the votes.

The Greener Homewood Party’s slogan was “Planting seeds of change,” and in that goal we succeeded. We’ve planted the seeds. Now we need the community onboard to water, nurture, and fight for them!

This starts with getting the community out in full force to board meetings and hearings that matter. On April 8 the Village board meets again, and most likely there will be a hearing on selling off the village hall parking lot to add a 6-story multi-family building. This hearing was previously scheduled before the election and several board meetings ago it was moved after Election Day.

We need the community to show up and be brave enough to GIVE PUBLIC COMMENT. The board and the community need to know that residents do not want this development. Publicly speaking against wrong creates solidarity for the movement and WE NEED YOU!

Because Facebook is so problematic, we are taking our organizing and continued campaign efforts to Discord. Follow this link to join us, and be a part of the movement for change.

Check out the Homewood Political Action community on Discord - hang out with 7 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

04/01/2025

Tomorrow is election day. For the voters of Homewood, you have a choice. We have a fully competitive election for the first time in many years.

The Greener Homewood Party has presented you with clear policy actions and changes: holding town halls to have open and public dialogue with the community; instituting term limits to allow more people to participate in our government; stopping the toxic pollution at Izaak Walton; creating an Environmental Justice Commission to get in front of environmental issues before they happen; helping support our small, local businesses, not large corporations; increasing pedestrian and cyclist safety; and adding accessible parking in our downtown district.

These are distinctions between the Greener Homewood Party and the Greater Homewood Party. Any action that the Greater Homewood Party has promised on these issues is a REACTION to the Greener Homewood Party’s campaign. Otherwise, after 27 years in power, they would have already addressed these issues.

The Greener Homewood Party is made up of serious people who want to include the entire community in being part of real change. Homewood’s strength and beauty are built by our residents.

We’ve planted the seeds, and now it’s time for change in Homewood. Please come to the polls tomorrow to vote for Tiffany Cole, Craig Frank, Patrick McAneney, and Liz Varmecky.

Tell your friends and tell your neighbors: This is what democracy looks like.

03/29/2025

Many people have asked our campaign what we can do to lower property taxes. There isn't a lot, but we can stop passing TIFs that don't benefit our community or help our local businesses.

-----On TIFs: How They Starve Schools and Cause Taxes to Rise-----
Through the course of the campaign and over the last several years, many people have asked me about TIFs. What are they? How do they work? I hope that this will serve as a condensed (as brief as possible for such a complicated financial instrument) explanation of how TIFs inevitably lead to rising residential property taxes and lowering the revenue for our valued public services.
I have also included a PDF linked below that has links to some of the situations that I mention in the piece.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KyrfjjBlhcVSHK-7ynnE-znfyLcu_nJe/view?usp=drive_link

Ostensibly, TIFs create a district in a blighted area that allows financing improvements in the district based on the future potential property tax revenue of the district. Sounds reasonable, right? No one wants blighted districts in their communities.

A TIF, which is an acronym for tax increment financing, is a very complicated way to do a very simple thing: take money away from the public and give it to private interests.

Here is how the TIF creation process works:

Step 1: The municipality identifies an area in the community in need of development or is approached directly by a developer asking for a TIF for a specific project. (Think the attempted Calumet Country Club TIF, or the TIF cut out of the downtown TIF for developing the Village Hall parking lot.)

Step 2: The municipality hires a TIF consultant. (The last TIF consultant hired in Homewood was $23,500.)

Step 3: The TIF consulting firm documents why the district is blighted based on the state’s definition of blight. (Empty buildings, “undeveloped parcels” like greenspace, loose fascia, etc.) The consulting firm also creates an outline of how much tax revenue the TIF will generate for its life; what the TIF funding could be used for in the district to improve the blight; and sets the timeline for the life of the TIF.

Step 4: The municipality convenes a Joint Review Board (JRB). This board is made of non-elected “representatives” of taxing bodies (public schools, public libraries, public parks, and the municipality itself) that will have their property tax revenues reduced for the life of the TIF. This JRB meeting is open to the public and is generally held at inconvenient times for working people and students: 2 pm on a Thursday.

Step 5: The JRB votes to approve the TIF. (The JRB always votes to approve the TIF.)

Step 6: The municipality’s board of trustees votes to approve the TIF now that it has the proper documentation from the consultant and the nod of approval from the taxing bodies that will lose revenue for the next 23 years through the JRB.

Step 7: The municipality can now get financing based on the projected revenue of the TIF. This financing based on hypothetical revenue can only be spent within the TIF district and for expenses allowed by the TIF. Which businesses receive the funds and how much they receive are determined at the discretion of the municipality. (In the case of Homewood, this is determined by the Economic Development Department and the President of the Board.)

Step 8: The TIF is “successful” if this plan brings about a thriving area that is a benefit to the community-- in some way or another (for example through increased sales tax, or bringing an amenity, like a grocery store, to the community.) The TIF is a failure if the development plans didn’t increase tax revenue in the district, meaning the municipality incurred debt that now needs to be paid back by the municipality. This makes the municipality a player in the real estate development game, gambling with public money and guessing winners and losers.

All this would be well and good if the municipality were just playing with its own future property tax revenues; but that’s not how the money works. The TIF takes future property tax revenue from all local taxing bodies, including the underfunded public schools, the public libraries, and the public parks; hence the need to convene the JRB described above.

Here is how the TIF money flows:

Let’s say that the property taxes for a TIF district are $1 million when the district is created, which means that public schools receive about $600,000 from that TIF district. That $600K is all that the schools will get from this district for the next 23 years, or longer if the life of the TIF is extended. The library, parks, and municipal funding are also frozen at the amount that was allocated at the time of the TIF creation. We all know that, although funding for schools and public services will remain stagnant, the costs will inevitably increase.

As the property taxes increase in the TIF, all additional money generated will be sequestered in the TIF fund, starving our public safety, parks, libraries, and schools. As costs increase through inflation and expansion, so will the budgets of the public services that have now had a portion of their funding frozen. This means that they must get revenue from other sources, like increasing the taxes on properties outside of the TIF district, or through passing referendums to increase taxes to fund schools.

A TIF short-changes our public services and adds an additional tax burden to property owners outside of TIF districts.

TIF money could be used responsibly. Businesses the community needs and wants could be induced with a TIF, and they can be used to support our small, local businesses. But to know what the community needs and wants the Village must listen to the community.

03/24/2025

Candidate Tiffany Cole discusses supporting small businesses and including community input in decision making with Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle.

Tiffany Cole is a newcomer in the 2025 local election. She is running with the Greener Homewood Party for a seat on the Homewood Board of Trustees. She is a ...