Wilmington City Councilwoman Christian Willauer is the latest to criticize Tyler Technologies property reassessment process in Northern Delaware.
Willauer notes she got involved with the issue in January, talking to New Castle County and Tyler Technologies and even meeting with Tyler a couple of times.
She wasn’t satisfied with Tyler’s answers, especially that errors come with a massive appraisal process and they can be corrected in the next five-year appraisal.
She argues one major trend is that residential properties now carry more of the total tax burden than commercial properties in both the city and the county.
Willauer adds it’s not right to charge and in many cases raise taxes based on incorrect numbers.
"All levels of government need to cooperate, collaborate, work together to make a commitment. We will not charge people taxes on incorrect numbers, and if that means that we will use last year's numbers, while we work this out,” said Willauer. “We have to identify where the errors are, we have to take the steps to correct them."
Willauer says her issues include lower valued residential and commercial properties being over assessed and higher valued properties were under assessed.
She adds increasing commercial tax rate doesn’t fully recoup lost revenue from large, under-assessed properties, and increases taxes for many small businesses.
For now, Willauer wants to see some immediate steps taken
"I'm really encouraged to see that county council is now asking for an audit of Tyler Technologies number. I think we need to go further. We need to have an audit. We need to identify where the errors are, and New Castle County needs to take steps to correct the assessment values of the properties so they equal fair market value before using these new assessment values to charge anyone taxes," said Willauer.
