Post-reassessment split property tax rates in New Castle County are allowed to stay, but legislators aren’t done talking about reassessment.
Delaware’s Court of Chancery upheld the state lawmakers move to give New Castle County school districts the ability to split property tax rates for residential and commercial property owners.
State Sen. Bryan Townsend said he’s relieved residential taxpayers will see some relief, but says lawmakers are not done. The special committee looking at reassessment is set to resume its work soon.
“There will be at least three hearings before the group concludes its work, at which point we will then be developing legislation to run in Dover to address how assessments go, how taxation systems come together,” Townsend said.
GOP State Reps. Kevin Hensley and Mike Smith want New Castle County to completely redo its property reassessments.
Hensley said the property valuations came out badly flawed, especially for farmland. He added property owners would pay the same amount as last years’ bills if the reassessment was redone.
“I'm anxious to work across the aisle,” Hensley said. “I think this needs to be a bipartisan effort, which is one reason why I hope that the committee will come up with some solid measures to be taken. If we determine as a committee that we're able to address it on a case by case basis, I’m certainly open to a conversation.”
House Democratic leadership said in a written statement going back to last year’s property values would violate a court-approved education funding settlement and put the state at risk of another lawsuit.
“It would turn back the clock on decades of neglect and reinstate assessments that the courts already found fundamentally broken and unlawful,” the statement said.
It could also destabilize school district and county budgets that are already written using the new tax rates.
Townsend countered Hensley and Smith’s proposal, saying he wants to move forward and address the limited inaccuracies that occurred.
“I'm a bit surprised that members of the special committee would have said that,” Townsend said. “I think we've already heard very clearly why that is neither feasible nor legally required, nor appropriate.”
An Amazon facility in Newport saw a $2.5 million reduction in its property tax bill post-reassessment.
“I'm not necessarily suggesting one or nothing – in other words, starting over or nothing,” Hensley said. “But I would hope that all of us would agree that we need to do something in order to address what I'm unfortunately suspecting to be thousands of errors in value.”
Townsend cautioned legislators using a drastic approach.
“But to leap to the idea that the whole thing needs to be redone, I think flies in the face of the conclusions that the judge reached,” Townsend said.
Hensley said people still waiting on appeals are at the top of his mind.
The Special Committee on the property reassessment does not yet have dates set for its remaining hearings.
