New Castle County school districts all prepare tax rate resets

How much relief is to come, however, remains unclear for the majority of districts.

Districts have until early next week to approve new rates under House Bill 242, otherwise they forfeit the ability to provide relief to homeowners.

If approved, the New Castle County government aims to mail out recalculated tax bills by Sept. 30, and property owners would have until Nov. 30 to pay the revised bills. 

If you’ve already paid your annual bill, and the revised bill is more than $50 cheaper, you can request a refund or allow the overpayment to be applied as a credit to next year’s bills. Sums under $50 will be applied as a credit.

So far, only Brandywine and Colonial have released details about what their restructured tax rates could look like.

What does Brandywine propose to do?

Brandywine proposes a two-pronged benefit to district homeowners.

First, it would remove the 1.7% rate increase that it approved in July in an attempt to safeguard against program cuts by the federal government. Since that vote, the Trump administration agreed to release billions in withheld state education funding for teacher resources and support for low-income students and English language learners, including more than $1.2 million for Brandywine.

The district would also split its rates, with both residential homes and farms under one rate and apartments, commercial, industrial, and utilities under another rate. That mirrors the approach taken by the New Castle County government.

Ultimately, homeowners would see a tax rate reduction from 66.61 cents to 56.09 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value, while the non-residential rate would rise to $1.0382 per hundred – an 85% difference in the new rates.

That equates to roughly 32,549 properties seeing tax bill reductions while 1,328 would see increases, and residential properties once again making up 67% of the total tax burden.

“Relief will limit, but not erase, the additional tax burden from the reassessment,” the district warns, meaning many homeowners can still expect increases over last year, albeit smaller sums than notified last month.

The proposal needs to be approved by the Brandywine Board of Education tonight in order to be put into effect.

What does Colonial propose to do?

Colonial also aims to split its rates, with both residential homes and farms under one rate and apartments, commercial, industrial, and utilities under another. That also mirrors the approach taken by the New Castle County government.

Homeowners would see a tax rate reduction from 55.17 cents to 45.23 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value. The non-residential rate would rise to 74.294 cents per hundred – a 64% difference from the residential rate.

The rates reset residential properties to once against making up about 53% of the total tax burden.

The average Colonial district home – worth about $336,000 – would see a reduction of more than $300 under the new split rate structure, reducing the year-over-year tax increase from 42% to 16%.

Unlike Brandywine, Colonial is proposing to retain the 7% revenue increase that its school board approved earlier this summer under the reassessment. That contributes about 2.9 cents to the residential tax rate.

The proposal needs to be approved by the Colonial Board of Education on Tuesday night in order to be put into effect.