Documents show settlement is near for plan to finally reassess Delaware properties after decades
From Delaware Online
Officials from Delaware’s three counties are negotiating a lawsuit settlement that would see a multiyear process for reassessing the values used to tax individual properties up and down the state – a process that is likely to render widespread changes to residents’ and businesses’ tax bills in coming years.
Attorneys have told a judge they are working to settle, by the end of the year, a lawsuit that found the property valuations currently used by Delaware’s three counties to calculate tax bills to be unconstitutional, according to recent court transcripts and correspondence.
Newly revealed court documents shed light on the time frame and goals being contemplated by county leaders and the education activists who sued them over the local tax systems.
Each county has submitted reassessment planning proposals that outline a four-year process beginning in January for reassessing properties, according to court documents.
“Our goal is to have this done and have the reassessment baked into the bills by 2024,” New Castle County attorney Nicholas Brannick told a Chancery Court judge in a recent hearing.
Under each of the counties’ planning proposals – which are not final and subject to change – new tax bills would not be mailed before 2024. Residents, however, would be notified of new property values in 2023 and be allowed to appeal.