Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Dover City Council begins budget deliberations

Milton Pratt
/
Delaware Public Media

Dover’s City Council begins discussions on the city’s budget amid concerns over the cost of providing utilities.

The proposed 2024 budget would total $201 million – a 3.6 percent increase over last year’s budget.

But the city’s revenue growth is not keeping pace with expenses – in part because of recent salary increases for city staff, and the rising costs of capital projects and maintaining city infrastructure.

Finance Director Lori Peddiford says property tax revenues fall far short of meeting the city’s basic needs and the city spent more money generating and distributing electricity than it collected in electricity fees.

“Using the current rates, we would bring in about $81 million in revenue," she said. "If you look at the operating costs, they are well over $81 million.”

The council is considering raising electrical rates — as they did in 2022 — to close the gap.

The proposed 2024 budget would also increase the city’s general tax by four percent, delay $6 million in capital projects, and transfer $8 million from the city’s electrical fund to the general fund, despite the city's current net loss on utilities expenses.

Meanwhile, the council also searching for opportunities to fund full-time positions in the fire department, which currently relies entirely on volunteers — many of whom are aging out of service or are unavailable during after-hours shifts.

Council President William Hare suggested that the city could charge property owners for fire department responses after three dispatches to their property as a means to raise funds to pay a full-time fire department member, arguing that the fee might also disincentivize frequent callers and reduce strain on the limited number of available fire units.

Hare specifically pointed to Delaware State University, which received 164 fire department responses last year. "If they need to start paying something for every time the fire department was dispatched up there, maybe it might get a little better," he said.

Council begins finalizing the city’s 2024 budget later this month.

Paul Kiefer comes to Delaware from Seattle, where he covered policing, prisons and public safety for the local news site PubliCola.