THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUING SUPPORT!
Thank you to each of you who has signed, shared, and supported this growing petition.
Please continue to share the petition with your neighbors, family, and friends. Every signature and every conversation helps.
Your continued support is essential to increasing public awareness and understanding of Tax Increment Financing (TIF)—how these powerful economic-development tools are intended to work, how they can affect taxpayers and taxing bodies for decades, and how they can potentially be misused or abused without adequate transparency, oversight, and community involvement.
An informed community is an empowered community.
Keep asking questions. Keep sharing information. Keep the conversation going.
And most importantly—keep making your voice heard.
Residents continue to ask, “What’s a TIF?!”
8 Independent Sources Every Resident Should Know
Understanding Tax Increment Financing before committing a community to a decades-long redevelopment district matters.
These resources provide Illinois law, independent analysis, government-finance best practices, fiscal data, and academic research. They are useful whether you support, oppose, or are still evaluating a TIF.
1. CIVIC FEDERATION — Tax Increment Financing: A Primer (2026)
https://civicfed.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/TIF%20Primer%202026_Final_0.pdf
What it helps evaluate: One of the most comprehensive independent Illinois overviews of TIF—how it works, its potential effects on taxpayers and overlapping taxing bodies, the designation process, arguments for and against TIF, and current empirical research.
2. ILLINOIS GENERAL ASSEMBLY — Illinois TIF Law
https://www.ilga.gov/Documents/legislation/ilcs/documents/006500050K11-74.4-3.htm
What it helps evaluate: The primary legal source for understanding what municipalities may—and must—do, including eligibility requirements, redevelopment plans, allowable costs, public hearings, financing, and allocation of the tax increment.
3. CHICAGO METROPOLITAN AGENCY FOR PLANNING (CMAP) — Local Development Incentives
https://cmap.illinois.gov/wp-content/uploads/CMAP_Local_Incentives_Guide_2020_Spreads.pdf
What it helps evaluate: Whether TIF is actually the appropriate economic-development tool, including costs versus benefits, alternatives, transparency, fiscal sustainability, and effects on other taxing bodies.
4. CMAP — Are Tax Incentives Right for Your Community?
https://cmap.illinois.gov/wp-content/uploads/FY21-0036_Incentives_Piece_081321_FINAL.pdf
What it helps evaluate: A particularly useful resident-friendly checklist addressing whether investment would occur without the incentive, whether benefits exceed costs, whether alternatives exist, and potential impacts on schools and other taxing bodies.
5. GOVERNMENT FINANCE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION (GFOA) — TIF Best Practices
https://www.gfoa.org/materials/creation-implementation-and-evaluation-of-tax-increment
What it helps evaluate: Whether a municipality is following nationally recognized public-finance practices when creating, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating a TIF district.
6. ILLINOIS COMPTROLLER — TIF Financial Reports
What it helps evaluate: Moves the discussion from projections to actual financial reporting. Residents can examine Illinois TIF reports and compare revenues, expenditures, obligations, and other reported financial information.
7. GOOD JOBS FIRST — TIF Accountability & Education
https://goodjobsfirst.org/tax-increment-financing/
What it helps evaluate: Provides a critical accountability perspective, examining subsidies, developer benefits, transparency, public costs, and whether claimed economic-development benefits justify TIF expenditures.
8. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS — 2025 Research on TIF & Suburban Cook County Schools
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/136433
What it helps evaluate: Particularly relevant to suburban Cook County. This academic research examines relationships among TIF districts, property wealth, and school revenues and provides another evidence-based perspective for residents evaluating potential school impacts.
FIVE QUESTIONS TO KEEP BESIDE YOU WHILE READING:
1) Would this development reasonably occur without the TIF?
2) What evidence—not simply projections—supports the need for the incentive?
3) What are the potential fiscal effects on schools and other overlapping taxing bodies?
4) What alternatives were seriously evaluated before choosing TIF?
5) What measurable outcomes, safeguards, reporting requirements, and exit strategies will hold the municipality accountable?
TIF EDUCATION IS PRO-INFORMED DECISION-MAKING.
For a proposed 23-year public-finance commitment, residents should have access to independent information and primary sources—not rely solely on materials produced by a municipality, its consultants, developers, advocacy organizations, or opponents.
Being informed does not require being pro-TIF or anti-TIF.
It means understanding the tool, asking hard questions, examining the evidence, and making up your own mind.
An informed community is an empowered community.
Keep asking questions. Keep sharing information. Keep the conversation going.
And most importantly—
KEEP MAKING YOUR VOICE HEARD.
Please, continue to stay informed and share your knowledge with others. Thank you.
Please, attend upcoming meetings and write to the Village Trustees: (send to both emails)
vgroup@northfieldil.org
TIF@northfieldil.org
If you are interested in a yard sign, please, feel free to text your name and address to: (847) 721-7277. We will be actively delivering sign requests this weekend.
Thank you for caring so deeply about our community.