The latest joint legislative special committee on property reassessment hearing Wednesday focused on New Castle County’s efforts to finish its work and deliver its final tax bills.
The county delayed sending out final bills due to the lawsuit filed brought by a cohort of landlords arguing against the constitutionality of split tax rates for residential and non-residential properties.
The split rates were upheld, with New Castle County spending between $150 and 200 thousand on legal fees in its portion of their defense.
What to expect from the incoming revised property tax bills
Taxpayers do not need to do anything to request their revised bills as they will be online and mailed to everyone.
New Castle County Chief Financial Officer David Del Grande urged residents to review the documents.
“Both bills should be read in conjunction with one another to determine your full tax obligation,” Del Grande said. “Any balance outstanding from the first bill will carry over the second bill reflecting the total amount due.”
Once revised bills are live online, property owners can apply to be put on a payment plan or pay in full. In order to qualify for a payment plan, school taxes have to increase by $300 or more. Property owners must also be up to date on all county-imposed fees and taxes.
The payment plan adds two more tax due dates, with one-third of the property tax payment due on Dec. 31, Feb. 27 and April 30.
If property owners are not enrolled in the payment plan and pay after the Dec. 31 deadline, state legislation allows New Castle County to apply a 1% late payment penalty.
Because of the altered timeline, school districts will receive funds later than usual through January. The state will provide funds to support payroll costs in the interim.
The county also created a portal online with documents showing the progression of the reassessment and other vital information.
County officials say steps to prepare for future reassessments include reviewing resource needs and potentially implementing a new billing system.
‘What went wrong?’
The process in New Castle County was riddled with problems, including thousands of appeals, tax burdens shifting toward residential properties and a lawsuit challenging split rates created to address that shift.
Some lawmakers sought more on what went wrong after a 40-year gap between reassessments and how to avoid those issues in the future.
State Rep. Cyndie Romer said she wants to understand how New Castle County ended up giving breaks to corporations and placing more burden on its poorest communities.
“The reality is that the people who are most impacted by that are the people who are least likely to be able to fight for themselves because they may have language barriers,” Romer said. “They have an understanding of the law barriers. They have time constraints.”
New Castle County’s attorney Aaron Goldstein said his personal opinion is people are unsatisfied with mass appraisals conceptually. As a practice, mass appraisals do not deliver perfect results of every property included in assessments.
“And if you were looking at the [International Association of Assessing Officers] standards… you would see that sort of seeded through the philosophy,” Goldstein said. “A mass appraisal gets a very difficult job done as quickly as possible with as little resources as possible. And then [it] has to rely on an underlying appeal process to correct errors. That's the governmental function, in a sense.”
But taxpayers still have every right to expect perfect results, Goldstein added.
Romer said the state is essentially aiming for individual appraisal results – which are more accurate – at mass appraisal cost.
State Sen. Bryan Townsend said people are right to be frustrated that certain corporate actors aren’t being assessed the amount of taxes they should be.
An Amazon facility in Newport saw a $2.5 million reduction in its property tax bill post-reassessment.
“We need to figure out whether there's anything we can do to provide sort of looking back relief versus just better results moving forward on some of that,” Townsend said. “And there's key questions about how to categorize different property properties differently… We're looking to make sure that hard working, lower income Delawareans, middle class Delawareans are not scraping to get by. We need to step up with certain kinds of tax structures to make sure that's true.”
The special committee on reassessment has two more hearings scheduled next month. The Dec. 2 hearing in the House Chamber will look at perspectives from the business community. The Dec. 9 hearing in the Senate Chamber will look to school districts and funding.
