New Castle County: 11,407 informal reassessment hearings completed; formal appeals due March 14

New Castle County officials told the County Council on Jan. 28 that informal hearings tied to the countywide reassessment have concluded and that residents who had an informal hearing will receive mailed notices of any assessment changes around Feb. 15.

The reassessment project manager from Tyler Technologies, Mike McFarland, told council members, “we've had a total of 11407 informal hearings.” He said “the preponderant majority of those were residential in nature. Approximately 10872 were residential hearings. The other 430 were commercial.” McFarland said about two-thirds of hearings were by phone and about one-third were in person at the Gilliam Building.

The informal process is complete and Tyler is finalizing revisions to assessed values, McFarland said. He told council the vendor and county planned a batch mailing of decision notices to informal participants on or shortly after Feb. 15 and were working with the mail vendor to have notices postmarked by Feb. 14.

Why it matters: mailed notices and the timing set the start of the formal-appeal window and determine who will receive an updated assessment before the statutory filing deadline.

County assessment manager Denny Hartman described the formal appeals process. He said every property owner may file a formal appeal even if they did not request an informal hearing. “By state code, it's March 14,” Hartman said when asked about the filing deadline. He said the Board of Assessment Review is scheduled to review updated formal-appeal forms and rule changes on Feb. 13; county staff expect to make online, fillable forms and a new “SmartFile” tool available after that meeting for public filing.

Hartman and Tyler officials gave an estimate for potential appeal volume. Tyler told the council the industry average for formal appeals is roughly 10 percent of parcels; if that industry average occurred in New Castle County it could mean “a little over 20,000 formal appeals,” the vendor said. Hartman offered a lower internal estimate of “somewhere between 7 and 12,000.” He cautioned that the county’s ability to process appeals will lengthen if filings are high: “If we get 10,000 in, it's gonna take … months to get through them.”

To speed processing, the county is preparing a referee program. At the meeting the council discussed Ordinance 25-014, which would authorize hiring referees to hear reassessment appeals and set pay for those referees from the reassessment fund. The ordinance text presented at the meeting sets $35 per hour for residential-referee hearings and $50 per hour for nonresidential-referee hearings and specifies council approval of referee appointments. Council members said funds are already budgeted in the reassessment account to cover referee payments; the transcript records the pay rates and the funding source as part of the ordinance discussion but does not record a formal vote on the ordinance in the meeting minutes.

Council members asked for timely distribution of information to elected officials. McFarland agreed to work with Hartman to provide the county and key stakeholders the finalized assessment-change figures “before we read it in the paper,” so council offices can prepare to answer constituent calls.

Other clarifications from the meeting: - Notices: Tyler will mail decision notices for informal hearings in a single batch on or shortly after Feb. 15; those who did not receive an updated notice (because their value did not change and they did not request an informal hearing) will not receive a new November notice change. - Filing cost: Hartman said there is no fee to file a formal appeal. - Evidence standards: Hartman and Tyler said the formal-appeal forms and FAQ will explain acceptable evidence; residential appeals generally rely on either a Delaware-certified appraisal or comparable-sales analysis.

Next steps: County staff and Tyler expect to post the formal appeal forms, rules and FAQ on the county website after the Board of Assessment Review meets Feb. 13. The statutory deadline to file formal appeals remains March 14, per Hartman. Processing time will depend on total filings and the eventual volume of appeals.