Huntley Village Trustee Tim Hoeft to challenge Chuck Sass after 20 years as mayor

After serving as Huntley’s mayor for the past 20 years, Chuck Sass said he is hoping for one more term before he passes the baton, but his challenger, Trustee Timothy Hoeft, said the time has come for a fresh face and believes he is the man for the job.

While Hoeft said he has the utmost respect and admiration for Sass, who he has known since he was 5 years old, Huntley has grown immensely over the past 20 years and he said he feels prepared to lead the village into its next stage of growth.

“There’s some styles of leadership that I think probably worked 20 years ago that could probably be handled in a different way now,” Hoeft said in an interview last week. “Sometimes I think when you’ve been in the position that long you need a breath of fresh air, not necessarily a change of direction, but just a different way of looking at some things.”

Sass, on the other hand, said the strong leadership he has provided to the village since it contained less than 6,000 residents to the present day with more than 27,000 shows his ability to be responsive to its changing needs.

He admitted was a bit surprised when Hoeft declared his intentions to run against him in the April 6 election as Sass has run unopposed in every election since his first back in 2001 when he beat out village Trustee Harry Leopold for the seat.

“I thought I had saved my [campaign] signs from back then, so I went downstairs and opened up this bag and it was from 1997 when I first ran for trustee, so I must have thrown all my mayoral signs out so it’s like starting over,” Sass said, laughing.

Given that he is not big on technology either, Sass said, he will be running on his considerably long record and his plans to expand the footprint of the village’s downtown area with new commercial and industrial development.

The downtown area is limited on development space, so, Sass said, it is crucial that the village make the most of every available property. One example of how it can do this is to find a developer for the property of the old Catty Corporation building, which the village bought in 2017, he said.

Expanding business development in Huntley, specifically at the southern end of the downtown area, is also at the top of Hoeft’s list, he said.

The village invested a great deal into transportation infrastructure in the area with the improvements to Route 47, and, Hoeft said, the Village Board now needs to focus on attracting businesses along that corridor to make that investment worthwhile.

“We have got to be always looking that, if somebody wants to come in, to embrace it with open arms and see what’s going to be best for the whole community,” Hoeft said.

Prior to becoming a village trustee, Hoeft worked for TJH Contracting Inc. for 25 years, becoming vice president of the company in 2002 and then president in 2010. He said his experience in the industrial sector will aid him in facilitating that kind of development in the downtown area.

Hoeft has lived in Huntley for 36 years after moving to the village when he was 5, he said. His father, Terry Hoeft, served 10 years as a Huntley trustee, which Hoeft said gave him an appreciation for public service at a young age.

He first ran for the Huntley Village Board in 2015 when he captured 28.4% of the vote, leading over the two other incumbent candidates who also secured spots on the board, Harry Leopold and Niko Kanakaris, according to reporting by the Northwest Herald.

Another priority for Sass, if reelected, would be to continue pushing to bring passenger rail service to downtown Huntley, he said. The village has been in talks with Amtrak for many years but, more recently, Metra has expressed some interest in being the one to bring a stop to Huntley.

“We were looking at Metra years ago and they needed 20 acres of land,” Sass said. “Well, obviously we don’t have 20 acres of land downtown, so we’ll see.”

As the village will undoubtedly continue to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic over the next four years, Hoeft said, if elected, he would make sure that the Village Board continued its “lean and mean” approach to budgeting.

In times like these, “you have to tighten the straps up a little bit to make sure that you’re solvent and good ... and not just pass the burden onto our taxpayers,” Hoeft said.

Sass said he has proven himself to taxpayers as being anything but a “tax and spend liberal.”

“For five or six years, we kept the tax levy the same and then this year we kept it the same,” Sass said. “People are struggling, and the board was unanimous on that.”

COVID-19 also will pose a challenge for the race itself as the candidates won’t be able to go door-knocking or participate in in-person forums such as the one traditionally held by Del Webb’s Sun City Huntley.

Hoeft said he would gladly participate in a virtual forum and, other than that, will be sharing information about what he would bring to the role through his campaign Facebook page.

“It’s going to be close, and we’re both going to have to work for it,” Hoeft said.