By Benjamin Rothstein

DOVER – The Kent County Levy Court held its first budget workshop Wednesday where commissioners discussed broadly how to fill a several-million-dollar gap. It served as an initiation to prepare commissioners for the types of discussions and decisions to come.

“When we get criticized, we’re always criticized by the worst dollar we spent,” said County Administrator Ken Decker. “So that’s just the reality, and a good budget depends on really tough decisions.”

It is difficult to find places to cut the budget. Often, when things like maintenance costs are cut, it could lead to a greater cost down the road. The budget is split into two parts: an operating budget and a capital budget.

Mr. Decker explained that the operating budget is relatively straightforward and covers day-to-day costs, while capital budgets can be more difficult to decide on as the funds go toward something that lasts a longer period, like a building.

Even with the deficit, Mr. Decker also noted underfunded areas like staff training.

“We have supervisors who never had any kind of introductory or basic supervisory training, we have customer service people who’ve never had customer service training. We have training needs across the board because we’ve underinvested for over a decade.”

Many commissioners were quick to remove raising taxes as a solution.

“I’m not interested in raising property taxes,” said Commissioner Jody Sweeney. “I’ll vote no on the tax increase, I’ll vote no on the budget, just because I don’t want to raise taxes. We already did that once.”

Commissioner Jeffrey Hall, however, argues that there is only so much cutting that can be done.

“So, a year ago, we probably said let’s cut everything we can, and then two years ago, we probably said cut everything you can,” said Mr. Hall. “I have complete faith that the directors have cut and cut, worked within a very thin margin. And I’m not saying that that’s why we need to raise taxes, but what I’m saying is, it sounds nice: ‘We’ll just keep making cuts,’ but we’ve said that for probably 300 years.”

An idea brought up was a lodging tax, something that the City of Dover discussed at length recently. In theory, the tax only applies to tourists and not to residents, as that is usually tourists who stay in hotels or other lodging establishments within the county.

Commissioners determined that the tax would likely be set at 3%, as that amount allows it to be collected by the state. This is the issue Dover ran into, as theirs is set at 1.5% and makes enforcing it virtually impossible.

Commissioner Sweeney, who brought up the tax, also noted that reception of the potential tax in the past was less than positive.

“We tried it a couple of years ago and it got eviscerated in the public,” said Commissioner Sweeney.

Levy Court budget discussions are set to continue next week, focusing on personnel costs.