Wilmington residents, council seek data and outreach after county reassessment produces wide valuation swings

Wilmington City intergovernmental committee members and residents pressed New Castle County and contractor Tyler Technologies for clearer data and better outreach after a countywide property reassessment produced widely varying proposed property values, speakers said at the committee’s Feb. 5 meeting.

The reassessment, the first since 1983, raises proposed assessed values for many city parcels but does not automatically raise tax bills, the committee said. Council members and multiple residents urged the city to seek explanations of methodology, delivery rates for mailed notices, and to request parcel-level data that residents can use to appeal. Council members said Tyler Technologies and a county representative were invited to the meeting but did not attend.

Why it matters: property tax allocations and the city’s future tax collections will use the county’s updated assessed values, so errors or uneven application across neighborhoods could shift tax burdens. Residents and council members said many homeowners — particularly elderly or low-income residents — lack the time, internet access or funds to hire private appraisers and may not be able to pursue appeals on their own.

City chair Council Member Shanae Darby opened the meeting by explaining the committee’s mission and the reassessment background. “So tonight, we are gonna have a discussion, with the community about the property assessment,” Darby said. She told residents how to file appeals with the county’s Board of Assessment Review and summarized deadlines cited by staff: an informal deadline reported as Dec. 20, 2024; formal appeal forms available Feb. 14, 2025; and a March 14, 2025 filing deadline for formal appeals.

Residents described receiving a single-page notice of assessed value without supporting comparative data or a clear explanation of how values were calculated. Colin Barrett, a resident of Union Park Gardens, said, “I just have a number. Nothing else.” Several other speakers said they received only a short notice and not the parcel-level comps or itemized data that would show how the contractor calculated assessed values.

Multiple residents and Council Member Christian Willower offered numerical examples they said showed large and inconsistent changes. Willower reviewed parcel entries from the county’s parcel search, citing several small urban lots whose proposed land values increased from the current low hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars — producing per-acre equivalents of millions of dollars in some blocks. Willower said in one example a 0.02-acre lot’s proposed land value was $41,000 and the proposed total value was $227,000, an increase of roughly 15 times over the current assessed figure. In another example he cited a property whose proposed total rose about 27 times.

Jamila Davey, a Fifth District resident, told the committee that county staff expect about 15,000 parcel owners to file formal appeals — a figure she called roughly 13% of parcels — and urged the city to ask the county and Tyler Technologies whether the county is analyzing appeal trends and whether similar properties are receiving consistent adjustments. “Satisfaction is not what we want. We want a fair and correct tax assessment,” Davey said.

Residents raised several recurring concerns:

- Notices and accessibility: many residents said they received only a short assessment letter and that older residents may not have internet access or the technical knowledge to use online parcel search tools. Laura Filan said she received follow-up material with only five days left to request an informal appeal after the initial notice, which she said was an insufficient window.

- Methodology and comparables: commenters said the contractor appeared to rely on self-reported interior features or remote observation rather than consistent in-person appraisals. Christina Panza and others described differences between phone-based informal reviews and in-person reviews and said some residents who went in person saw supporting comparables while phone respondents did not.

- Land-value discrepancies: speakers pointed to blocks where land values per acre varied dramatically between adjacent streets and neighborhoods, producing apparent inequities when converted to per-acre figures.

Several residents also raised data-security and contractor-responsibility questions about Tyler Technologies, including how the company stores and uses parcel-level information gathered during the reassessment.

Council members and staff said they would compile the public comments and attempt outreach to Tyler Technologies and New Castle County to request: parcel-level data or sample comps used for assessments, explanations of methodology, delivery and notice statistics, and a summary of trends in informal appeals. The chair said the committee will continue this as an ongoing topic and try to secure county or contractor participation at a future meeting.

No formal policy vote or ordinance was taken during the meeting. The committee adjourned by voice vote at the end of the session.

The committee recorded the public record, and council members asked residents who received detailed comps or unusual parcel data to forward that documentation to city staff for aggregation and to help the city identify patterns that might merit county correction or targeted relief for residents who cannot mount individual appeals.