Red Clay board approves split tax rates to blunt reassessment impact on homeowners

Red Clay Consolidated School District trustees voted unanimously on Aug. 20 to adopt split FY26 school tax rates that lower the residential tax rate and increase the rate for nonresidential property, aiming to restore the district—s pre-reassessment distribution of tax burden.

The district—s chief operating officer, Dr. Ted Ammon, presented background on recent state legislation enacted during a special session and the mathematics used to set the new rates, then answered board questions before the vote.

Ammon said the district—s previous single rate approved in July was 0.6719 per $100 of assessed value. Under the board—s split-rate action, the residential/farm rate will drop to about 0.5918 per $100 (a roughly 12% reduction from the July single-rate figure), while the apartment/commercial/industrial/utility rate will rise to about 0.99237 per $100 (about a 48% increase). Ammon said the change preserves the pre-reassessment share of district revenue, assigning roughly 74% of the district—s tax revenue to residential parcels and 26% to nonresidential parcels, matching the proportion that existed before the recent county reassessment.

Why it matters: property reassessments performed by New Castle County produced large, uneven changes in assessed values across parcels,…