Why Should Delaware Care?
New Castle County homeowners can expect smaller tax bills this year now that school boards approved new split rate structures for residential and commercial properties. Following public outcry, state lawmakers approved legislation in a special session last week allowing northern school districts to offer that relief.
A week after state lawmakers allowed the public school districts in New Castle County to split their property tax rates to provide additional relief to homeowners, each has done so.
However, three of the five also chose to retain the extra revenue that they raised through a unilateral tax increase that was possible due to a decades-old quirk around reassessment.
The school boards for the Appoquinimink, Brandywine, Christina, Colonial, and Red Clay Consolidated school districts approved new rates that will lower tax burdens for homeowners and raise them for commercial properties.
Each classified 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.
The Smyrna School District, which has some New Castle County properties, is not eligible to adjust its rates under the bill approved by lawmakers, who specified that a district must be located “entirely in New Castle County.”
What are the new rates?
| District | Residential Rate | Non-Residential Rate | Did it cut extra revenue? |
| Appoquinimink | 0.57692 | 1.15378 | No |
| Brandywine | 0.5609 | 1.0382 | Yes |
| Christina | 0.6150 | 1.2102 | No |
| Colonial | 0.4523 | 0.74294 | No |
| NCC Vo-Tech | 0.0376 | 0.0608 | N/A |
| Red Clay | 0.5918 | 0.99237 | Yes |
What happens now?
The New Castle County government aims to mail out recalculated tax bills by Sept. 30, and property owners 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.
How do I calculate my new tax bill?
Homeowners should find their property tax assessment on the county’s parcel search website by using your street number and street name. Note that you need to use only the street name and do not include road, street, avenue, boulevard, etc.
Once you’ve found your total assessment, divide that number by 100 and multiple it by the residential rate for your school district. This will give you your new tax bill.
You can compare that number to the “School Principal Due” number for 2025A on your parcel search webpage to determine the difference in the values.
What did Appoquinimink do?
The Appoquinimink School District Board of Education approved new split rates at its Aug. 21 meeting.
Homeowners will see a tax rate reduction from 63.75 cents to 57.69 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value. The non-residential rate will rise to about $1.15 per hundred – a 99% difference from the residential rate.
However, Appoquinimink also retained the 10% revenue increase that its school board approved earlier this summer under the reassessment. It passed that adjustment following a disclosed major accounting error which has sparked multiple audits of the Middletown-area school district.
What did Brandywine do?
The Brandywine School District Board of Education approved a two-pronged benefit to district homeowners at its Aug. 18 meeting.
First, it removed 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.
Second, homeowners will see a tax rate reduction from 66.61 cents to 56.09 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value, while the non-residential rate will 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 will see increases, and residential properties once again making up 67% of the total tax burden.
What did Christina do?
The Christina School District Board of Education approved new split rates at its Aug. 21 meeting.
Homeowners will see a tax rate reduction from 79.97 cents to 61.50 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value. The non-residential rate will rise to $1.2102 per hundred – a 96% difference from the residential rate.
Christina retained the 10% revenue increase that its school board approved earlier this summer under the reassessment. It had long chosen to take the additional funding now rather than go back for a referendum.
What did Colonial do?
The Colonial School District Board of Education approved new split rates at its Aug. 19 meeting.
Homeowners will see a tax rate reduction from 55.17 cents to 45.23 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value. The non-residential rate will rise to 74.294 cents per hundred – a 64% difference from the residential rate.
Colonial retained 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 rates reset residential properties to once again make up about 53% of the total tax burden.
The average Colonial district home – worth about $336,000 – will see a reduction of more than $300 under the new split rate structure, reducing the year-over-year tax increase from 42% to 16%.
What did Red Clay do?
The Red Clay School District Board of Education approved a two-pronged benefit to district homeowners at its Aug. 20 meeting.
First, it removed the 1% rate increase that it approved in July, noting that its concerns over withheld federal funding had been resolved.
Ultimately, homeowners will see a tax rate reduction from 67.19 cents to 59.18 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value, while the non-residential rate will rise to 99.237 per hundred – a 67% difference in the new rates.
That equates to roughly 52,500 properties seeing tax bill reductions while 3,250 will see increases.
What did NCC Vo-Tech do?
The New Castle County Vocational-Technical School District approved new split rates at its Aug. 25 meeting.
Homeowners county-wide will see a tax rate reduction from about 4.3 cents to 3.7 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value, while the non-residential rate will rise to about 6 per hundred – a 62% difference in the new rates.
The new rates restore the tax burden balance of about 66% on residential properties. Before the split rates, residential properties made up about 76% of the tax burden for the district which is fed by all five public school districts.