(NEW CASTLE COUNTY, DELAWARE) – Delaware lawmakers are moving to extend New Castle County’s split school property tax rates beyond June 30, while advancing a broader package of reassessment changes that would also set new statewide standards and tighten rules on future tax increases.

House Bill 461, sponsored by Rep. Kim Williams, would allow school districts in New Castle County to keep taxing residential and non-residential property at different rates instead of letting that authority expire on June 30. The bill would preserve the split-rate structure that districts used after the county’s 2025 reassessment upheaval.

Under the proposal, commercial property could remain taxed at a higher rate than residential property. The bill would also reduce the maximum multiplier for the non-residential rate from 2.0 times to 1.85 times the residential rate.

The measure arrives as lawmakers continue to deal with the fallout from the 2025 reassessment in New Castle County, which prompted an emergency response in Dover and opened a wider debate over how Delaware counties assess property and how school districts convert those values into tax bills.

In August 2025, lawmakers passed seven measures in a special session to provide immediate relief after the reassessment. That package created temporary protections for homeowners, required more reporting from county government, and gave school districts tools to rebalance tax burdens after steep shifts in assessed values.

One of those measures, House Bill 242, allowed New Castle County school districts to adopt split residential and non-residential tax rates for the 2025-2026 tax year. It shifted more of the burden onto commercial property owners whose assessments had fallen sharply.

Another, House Bill 241, required payment plans for residential taxpayers whose bills rose by $300 or more in the first year after reassessment. Taxpayers who remained compliant could avoid late fees, interest, and penalties.

Senate Bill 202 required New Castle County to send quarterly property-tax reports through the end of 2027. Senate Concurrent Resolution 122 ordered an immediate review of the reassessment by lawmakers working with state, local, and school-district officials.

The split-rate authority now at issue in House Bill 461 did not stand alone. Lawmakers also codified counties’ authority to separately tax different classes of real property in the broader package passed in August 2025, turning an emergency response into part of a larger policy framework.

Williams’ bill would extend that framework but narrow one piece of it. School districts would still be able to tax commercial property at a higher rate than residential property, but the ceiling would drop from the original cap of no more than two times the residential rate to 1.85 times.

That change would keep the split-rate approach in place while trimming the spread between classes of property. In practical terms, New Castle County districts would retain the ability to differentiate between homeowners and commercial owners as they set rates, but inside a tighter limit than the one lawmakers approved during the emergency phase.

The current package does not stop with House Bill 461. Lawmakers are pairing the proposed extension with measures tied to the committee investigation into the statewide reassessment system, signaling that the General Assembly is treating the New Castle County episode as both a local tax problem and a broader assessment issue.

House Concurrent Resolution 150, sponsored by Rep. Krista Griffith, would create a stakeholder working group to develop statewide standards for property assessments. The group would address rules for how property data is collected and maintained, two subjects that go to the mechanics of how assessed values are produced and updated.

The resolution also contemplates a rule that could prevent counties from certifying tax rolls if their assessments do not meet the standards the working group develops. That would push the reassessment debate beyond New Castle County by linking future county tax rolls to statewide benchmarks that do not yet exist.

A second Griffith measure, House Concurrent Resolution 151, would establish another working group to examine policy options the state or counties could use to reduce residents’ property-tax burden. The proposal keeps the focus on relief, but moves from emergency fixes toward longer-term tax policy choices.

Senate Bill 322 would change how school districts handle tax increases after reassessments. The bill would eliminate districts’ ability to automatically impose a 10% tax increase after reassessments and instead allow qualifying districts to raise taxes by up to 2% per year without a referendum.

Together, those measures show how lawmakers are trying to separate two questions that became tangled during the 2025 crisis: how property should be assessed and how much districts should be allowed to collect once assessments change. One set of bills deals with the tax roll itself. Another deals with rate-setting and annual increases.

House Bill 461 fits between those two tracks. It would let New Castle County school districts reset their property tax rates this summer after the reassessment review and any extension of split-rate authority, giving districts a way to respond to the latest assessment work without losing the structure they were allowed to use in the 2025-2026 tax year.

That timing matters inside the county’s tax calendar. If the authority expires on June 30, districts would lose the ability to maintain separate rates for residential and non-residential property just as lawmakers are still weighing reassessment findings and related reforms.

Extending the authority would keep that option on the table while the state works through the rest of the package. Reducing the multiplier to 1.85 times would also mark a shift from the emergency formula approved last year, suggesting lawmakers want to preserve flexibility without fully carrying forward the original cap.

The package also reflects how the 2025 reassessment crisis has continued to shape legislative work well past the special session that produced immediate relief. Measures adopted in August addressed urgent billing problems, but they also opened questions about oversight, standards, tax burden, and county accountability that lawmakers are still trying to answer.

New Castle County remains at the center of that effort because the reassessment fallout started there and because the school tax structure created for that county now faces an expiration date. Yet the proposed reforms reach further, especially the statewide standards contemplated by House Concurrent Resolution 150 and the tax-increase limits in Senate Bill 322.

If lawmakers approve the current package, school districts in New Castle County would keep the ability to impose split rates beyond June 30, though under a lower cap for commercial property. Counties statewide would also move closer to a common framework for assessments, with potential consequences for whether tax rolls can be certified at all.

The legislative response has followed the same arc as the reassessment controversy itself: first emergency relief, then oversight, then structural reform. House Bill 461 and the related measures now before lawmakers would carry that process into its next phase, balancing continued split-rate flexibility in New Castle County with a broader rewrite of how Delaware handles reassessment and property-tax increases.