Kent County Levy Court adopts a $37 million budget for 2024, relying in part on a twenty percent property tax increase.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kent County was able to rely on rising realty transfer tax revenues to avoid a tax increase as other expenses rose. But realty transfer tax revenues are drying up, and the county faces an $8 million deficit.
Ultimately, after asking departments to tighten their operating budgets, Commissioner George Sweeney says the Levy Court was still left with a gap they could only fill with a tax increase.
“As much as we don’t like to raise taxes, keep in mind that this court has not raised taxes since 2009," he said. "And the following year, we reduced taxes. In fact, since 1992, this court has raised taxes twice and reduced taxes four times."
The county has also largely exhausted its federal COVID-19 emergency relief funding, which it used in part to support nonprofits that saw fundraising collapse during the pandemic.
But County Administrator Ken Decker says in the long term the county will need to significantly increase spending to address critical infrastructure improvements, including upgrading the county’s water treatment facility to meet new federal standards for PFAS concentrations in drinking water.
“We have aging infrastructure, a lot of miles of pipe, an old plant, and we’re going to have to spend a lot of money on the sewer side to handle the increasing quality requirements for environmental protection," he said.
Decker adds that some operating expenses, including increasing demand for EMS services as Kent County’s population grows older, are also rising faster than revenues.
