Why Should Delaware Care?
With rapid growth in Sussex County, so comes stresses on existing roads and schools. In response, several Sussex school district officials have voiced support for imposing “impact fees” onto new developments in the area. Past county councilmembers have opposed the measure, but the new year brought new perspectives to the council. And lawmakers at the state level appear ready to support that perspective.
For the past year, public education officials in Sussex County have repeatedly called for more money to pay for school construction projects. Without it, they said, school would have to cram more kids into smaller spaces.
State lawmakers are now offering their response with a bill that would allow the county to charge new fees on building permits, and then direct the money toward school construction projects.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Russ Huxtable (D-Lewes/Rehoboth), passed the Delaware Senate last week. On Tuesday, the House Housing Committee gave its approval, sending the bill to a vote of the full House of Representatives.
The measure follows years of rapid population increases within Sussex County and subsequent complaints from community members that the growth had overburdened area roads and schools.
Between 2010 and 2023, Sussex County grew almost 34% to 263,506, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it the fastest growing county in Delaware during the period.
And the growth is likely to continue as developers have submitted plans for new subdivisions in recent years that would add another 14,000 homes.
Sussex County Councilman and former Woodbridge School District board member Steve McCarron supports Huxtable’s bill. During Tuesday’s House committee meeting, McCarron recounted to the committee a time when fellow Sussex County school officials had been asked whether they would support legislation to allow districts to collect a fee on development.
“To my knowledge, [ for ] every single school district in Sussex County, the answer was yes,” McCarron said during the meeting.
McCarron is one of three new county council members who have expressed a willingness to consider the approving the fees. The others are Jane Gruenebaum and Matt Lloyd.
All three were elected in 2024 amid a general popular backlash against development in Sussex County.
Two years ago, Huxtable sponsored a similar bill that would have allowed Sussex County to employ a different kind of fee on developers designed to address the impact of population growth on school capacity. It passed the legislature and was signed into law by then-Gov. John Carney.
But the Sussex County Council never imposed the new fee. Months after its passage in Dover, then-Councilman Mark Schaeffer said during a council meeting that he supports kids and teachers, but argued that dollars for schools should come from the state government, not the county, as reported by the Cape Gazette.
Since then, Sussex County school districts, such as Milford and Indian River, have expressed concerns with Spotlight Delaware about difficulties providing enough classroom space because of the ongoing population growth.
Milford School District Chief Operating Officer Sara Hale said earlier this year that growth at her schools “is exploding” to such an extent that they may not be able to house incoming students.
The impact fee measure came back to the Sussex County Council during its May 13 meeting, when the council voted 4-1 to ask staff to draft a proposed impact fee to present to local legislators. Huxtable introduced HB 176 about three weeks later.
Kent County also employs its own similar impact fee that collects money from developers and distributes it to schools.
And like Sussex County’s proposed measure, Kent County’s fee is different from a Voluntary School Assessment, or VSA, which sends collected fee revenue to the Delaware Department of Education to then distribute to local districts.
School district officials have previously told Spotlight Delaware that an impact fee is preferable to a VSA because it is locally controlled, and the county can determine what those fees will be.
Even if new impact fees are approved for Sussex County, the resulting revenue is unlikely to pay for the entirety of new construction projects. As a result, school district officials are still likely to hold referendums to ask voters for more taxpayer money.
Before holding such a referendum, districts are required to submit to the state a document called a certificate of necessity. But there is no guarantee that the state will approve the requests for money.
For example, Delaware’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 capital budget does not fulfill Cape Henlopen’s request for $47 million to help pay for a high school addition that would accommodate 600 students.
When certificate of necessity requests are rejected, districts must pay for renovations or repairs with their existing capital dollars, or they can hold a referendum for what the state calls a minor capital improvement.
Minor capital improvements must cost less than $1 million.
