TIF districts: why your rate can rise while values grow
Tax increment financing freezes the base for other taxing bodies and captures the growth.
Tax increment financing is a redevelopment tool with a real effect on everyone's rate, including people who do not live in the district.
The mechanism
When a TIF district is created, the equalized assessed value inside it is frozen at that year's level for the purpose of other taxing bodies. Growth above the frozen base — the increment — goes to the TIF fund for redevelopment rather than to the schools, village and county.
The effect on your rate
Those taxing bodies still need their levies. With the increment unavailable, the levy spreads across a smaller effective base, and the rate rises for everyone in the district — including property outside the TIF.
Whether it is good or bad
Genuinely contested, and it depends on whether the development would have happened anyway. That is a policy argument for a village board, not a board of review.
What it is not
Not a ground for appeal. A board of review cannot alter TIF treatment, and raising it in a hearing spends your time on something nobody in the room can change. If it concerns you, the forum is your municipality.