About 800 landowners seek formal assessment hearing
The owners of fewer than 1% of the nearly 200,000 properties in Sussex County requested a formal hearing by the March 31 deadline following the first countywide reassessment since 1973, County Administrator Todd Lawson said April 1.
About 800 owners chose to seek an appeal before the Sussex County Board of Assessment Review.
Hearings began last month and will continue through this month as the county works to finalize the property tax rolls that will be used to calculate tax bills that will be distributed in August to fund county and school district budgets.
The county is scheduled to complete its 2026 budget in June, and part of the process will be lowering the property tax rate to compensate for the drastically increasing assessments. The county plans to ensure the assessment update does not result in additional revenue, compared to last year.
School districts are allowed by state law to increase their property tax revenue by up to 10% following an assessment update.
Lawson said the final assessments speak for themselves.
“Framed another way, the owners of 99 out of 100 parcels apparently saw no reason to contest, and, I think that’s a testament to the fairness of a fact-based process,” Lawson said. “The credit goes to our staff, led by Finance Director Gina Jennings and Assessment Director Chris Keeler, for guiding us through this very cumbersome project, and certainly the public for their patience.”
Anyone still not satisfied after the formal appeal process can take their case to Superior Court.
The county has provided additional information about the revaluation project on its website at sussexcountyde.gov/reassessment.
The total assessed value of taxable properties in Sussex County increased to $91 billion under the new assessments, more than 20 times the total value in 1973, according to figures released by the county.
The countywide reassessment was spurred by an education funding lawsuit filed against the state of Delaware and all three counties in 2018. The case was settled in 2021, with all three counties agreeing to conduct property reassessments.
Sussex County hired Tyler Technologies to update assessments.
After it distributed tentative assessment data to property owners, the company staff held informal hearings from November to January for those who challenged the figures. A total of 11,647 hearings were scheduled, but 731 property owners did not show and 293 canceled. Of those who requested hearings, 6,082, or 52%, resulted in a change, while 4,541, or 39%, did not.
