The City of Wilmington put a plan in place to address disgruntled residents’ property reassessment values.
City Council will hear a budget ordinance on allocating $500 thousand to pay for the plan Oct. 2.
Mayor John Carney and City Councilmembers announced at a press conference Thursday they want to do neighborhood-based assessments in some areas to possibly adjust some new assessed values.
Carney pointed to a heat map that showed areas like Hilltop and Little Italy saw property tax rates increase by 100 and 200%.
“Our responsibility is to make sure it's fair, and that's what we're trying to do,” Carney said. “So we think we have to provide after having talked to Tyler, explored their methodology, discovered where it's its weaknesses, we feel like we've got to help and plug those holes, if you will.”
The proposed plan would have the city contract a third-party organization to perform a sampling of assessments, looking at interior conditions of properties. Interior assessments were lacking in Tyler Technologies’ assessment work.
The new work would focus on the areas hit the hardest with rate increases, many of which are low-income. The goal of the project would be to refine values and evaluate methodologies used in Tyler’s process.
“There are big differences that are negatively impacting, frankly, the people who can least afford it,” Carney said. “And that's troublesome just from an equity point of view.:
Tyler’s own final report conceded its city data fell outside of acceptable standards.
Wilmington City Councilmember Christian Willauer said she and her colleagues aren’t confident in the current values.
“This is obviously not fully baked…” Willauer said. “I think the responsible thing to do is to say, ‘listen, we're not done with this reassessment process.’ New Castle County should petition Chancery Court and say there's too many problems for us to go through with this.”
Willauer added she thinks the county should send out bills based on last year’s numbers and take a year to work out problems.
The power to split tax rates – granted by New Castle County Council in August – could go away if deemed unconstitutional in court. Willauer says officials throughout the county will have to go back to the drawing board if that happens.
Carney said the city can’t move forward without the county’s continued partnership, which might come with some difficult decisions.
“They haven't really been asked to do anything really hard yet,” Carney said. “For us, it's not the hard step, but it's finding a contractor that has expertise in this area – because it's very esoteric – and can help us fashion an approach that would be acceptable to change some of those values in a neighborhood way, as opposed to one house at a time.”
Willauer agreed the proposed plan will be complicated at the city and county level.
“But I think it's worth it,” Willauer said. “Right now, we have chaos. I mean, nobody knows what bill they're supposed to pay. People are going to be paying more than they should be. Other people are going to be paying less than they should be, then they're going to get a second bill. And what you need to run a good society, I think it's our job as government is to run things so that people can have confidence that we know what we're doing."
The city announced Friday it is extending its property tax payment deadline for a second time. It is now Friday, October 31. It was was originally set for the end of August, then pushed to Septmber 30.
Wilmington City Council next meets Oct. 2.
