Lewes’s Finance Committee says the city should use property value data from Sussex County in the future, rather than doing their own assessments, and city council members seem open to exploring the idea.
The Finance Committee discussed the possibility at a meeting earlier this month. If the city opts to use Sussex County’s data, which they could access for free, it would join a growing majority of municipalities in the county, said Finance Committee Chair Tina Samson.
“14 cities last year have already implemented the new values, and nine cities, including us, have not,” she said. “Now those nine cities, if you read the paper, you can see that they're coming on board, city by city.”
City Manager Ellen Lorraine McCabe confirmed that the city spends about $40,000 each time it updates its assessments to account for new construction or changes in property valuations. By going with the county’s data, Lewes could save that money, as well as much more when the city does a complete reassessment.
Samson agreed the decision would make financial sense.
“If we did it ourselves, we would probably go to the same company they used and we’d pay a quarter of a million dollars,” she said.
The Finance Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the Mayor and Council use county data in the future.
One possible point of confusion if the city adopts county valuations is the significant discrepancy between what the county says a property is worth, versus the city’s assessment. That’s because city numbers haven’t been updated for decades, while the county data is just a few years old.
When presenting the idea to a City Council work session on Tuesday, Councilman Joseph Elder noted that Lewes property owners should be used to seeing those higher county valuations.
“All the folks in the city of Lewes already have a Sussex County reassessment, so they're very aware of what that assessment is,” he said.
He also stressed that, because county assessments are higher, the city will have to make major downward adjustments in the tax rate to stay revenue neutral, as required by law. But, he cautioned, that doesn’t mean individual property tax bills won’t change.
“There would be no overall increase in the amount of money that the city gains from the taxes,” Elder said. “But some would go up and some would go down based upon the appraisals.”
He also reiterated that the city would see significant savings by using county numbers.
“There would be a savings for the city in terms of the fees that we now pay our local assessor to assess the properties,” Elder said. “We would not need that person to do that. It would be done by Sussex County.”
In order to use the county’s assessment data, Lewes will need to opt in by February 1. The likely next step for council members is another discussion later this month, followed by a public hearing in early November.
