By Matt Bittle

DOVER — A coalition of nonprofits has announced a settlement with Kent County over inequities in education funding stemming from the fact that property values have not been updated in more than 30 years.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware said Thursday an agreement has been reached in which Kent pledged to reassess property values by July 1, 2024.

The reassessment will provide a new tax base for school funding and update the values of homes and other buildings. A rule of thumb holds that about one-third of residents will see higher taxes, one-third will see their taxes go down, and one-third will see little change.

It’s been a long time since any of Delaware’s counties reassessed property values: Kent did so in 1987, while New Castle County’s most recent one was in 1983, and Sussex County’s last assessment was all the way back in 1974.

According to a 2008 report on reassessment from the General Assembly, “Delaware’s statewide assessed value represents just 21 percent of the market value.”

The issue has long been a political football, with counties avoiding it in large part due to the cost, while politicians have resisted out of fear of causing their constituents’ tax burdens to rise.

In a November 2018 opinion, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster excoriated the state and the counties over Delaware’s education funding system.

“The current regime forces school districts to ask voters on a regular basis to raise their own taxes,” he wrote. “Because the counties are not complying with the Market Value Requirement, the value of a school district’s tax base remains flat. But the cost of running a school district does not remain flat.

“Each year, inflation erodes the purchasing power of a school district’s budget, requiring more dollars to achieve the same results. Even if a school district does not introduce any new initiatives and just maintains the status quo, the absence of regular and systematic assessments inevitably generates a funding gap.”

A settlement was announced with New Castle several weeks ago. Litigation with Sussex remains active.

“We are thrilled to be making steady progress on the county track of this litigation,” Karen Lantz, legal and policy director at the ACLU of Delaware, said in a statement after the Kent settlement was announced. “We are pleased that New Castle and Kent county officials have agreed to ensure the completion of a long-delayed general reassessment. This is an important step towards more equitable and reliable funding for all schools, regardless of zip code.”

The state settled a related lawsuit with the nonprofits in the fall, promising to invest more money in disadvantaged students and closely examine changing Delaware’s system of funding education.