Delaware County considers 23% property tax increase as COVID-19 relief dollars run out

Delaware County councillors are preparing to approve a 23% property tax increase as the county faces steep budget shortfalls.

Officials faced forceful pushback from county residents concerned about rising costs of living in public meetings Tuesday and Wednesday, but insisted they were left with few options to maintain county services amid high inflation and as federal COVID-19 relief dollars ran out.

“No entity can deal with inflationary costs and a flat income. The math just does not work,” council member Kevin Madden said Wednesday. “We’ve held out hope that we could pull a rabbit out of the hat and continue to keep millage relatively flat … but for decades this county has kicked the can. They have failed to invest in their infrastructure.”

The council is set to vote on the increase and the county’s overall 2025 budget next week.

The proposed hike, county executive director Barbara O’Malley said, would equate to a roughly $185 increase annually for the typical homeowner in Delaware County, while a third of county homeowners would see an increase below $100.

O’Malley said the increase became necessary because Delaware County’s revenues had grown at slower rates than those in Philadelphia’s other collar counties and had not kept up with inflation. Delaware County Council voted last year to increase taxes by 5%, but after temporary federal pandemic relief dollars ran out, the more dramatic increase was necessary, O’Malley said.

“It was eventually going to end anyway, and we have to balance our budget year after year after year,” she said.

But the increase drove extreme frustration from members of the community in hours of public comment Tuesday and Wednesday. Residents argued they were already under increasing financial stress with high inflation and insisted the county should look for budget cuts rather than raising rates.

“If we lost our housing, we wouldn’t even be able to afford to get our apartment,” said Helen Struckmann, a Media resident whose husband is disabled.

Many speakers pointed to the increase as evidence of financial mismanagement by the Democratic-controlled board. They focused heavily on actions taken by the Democrats to increase county services, including creating a county health department and de-privatizing the county prison.

“The county needs to be like its citizens: It needs to find ways to cut costs,” said Todd Hall, a Havertown resident who addressed councillors Wednesday night.

But councillors argued that they’d worked hard to cut costs and said increases were primarily the result of rising wages for county workers across the board.

“As we’ve tried to fill exceedingly difficult positions to fill … we’ve had to pay more,” council member Christine Reuther said in an interview. “That, in a bigger way, has been what’s driving our expenses.”

Council vice chair Richard Womack said Tuesday he would prefer to hold off on increasing taxes and put together a commission to study the budget.

“I think right now we have sticker shock,” he said.

But most of the council showed reluctant support for the increase, blaming the 12 years with no tax increases under Republican leadership as the reason for the dramatic increase now.

Madden pointed toward a series of serious infrastructure problems and underfunded county services the Democratic-controlled council inherited in 2020, and said the tax increase came only after a series of efforts to tighten the budget.

“We have had more than a decade of disinvestment in what government does to provide services, and this board is in the position where we have to raise the revenue to invest and bring government to the level it needs to be to serve the public,” council member Elaine Schaefer said Tuesday.

Schaefer said she believed the increase could have been lower and said Tuesday she wasn’t yet sure whether she would vote for the increase.

The other three members — Madden, chair Monica Taylor, and Reuther — indicated support for the increase. As inflation continues to increase, Taylor said, further increases may be necessary in future years.

“I don’t take a tax increase lightly and implementing something like that, and I really do worry about our residents who are on fixed incomes and our residents who are already struggling to make ends meet,” Taylor said in an interview. “But I also have to be mindful of the services that we need to provide and are, in most instances, mandated to provide.”