New Castle County's first property reassessment since 1983 revalued 214,788 parcels, shifted tens of millions of dollars of tax burden onto homeowners, triggered a special session of the General Assembly, two court rulings, five legislative hearings, and a still-running quality-control review. This page assembles the primary record — court opinions, the vendor's own appraisal report, ordinances, tax warrants, FOIA releases, hearing video, official statements and public reaction — and visualizes it five ways. Every number below links to its source.
Each figure is drawn from a primary document, not from summary reporting, except where a news outlet is the only public record of a hearing statement.
Each dot is a primary artifact — a court opinion, statute, ordinance, mailed notice, FOIA release, hearing, press statement or piece of public reaction. Filter by type, hover for detail, click a dot to open the source. The record runs from the 2018 school-funding lawsuit to the tax bills due 31 December 2026.
Selecting an item shows what it is, who produced it, why it matters, and a direct link to the underlying document or recording.
In July 2025 every New Castle County school district billed one rate for all property. Three weeks later, under House Bill 242, six districts reset rates: down for homes, up for apartments, commercial, industrial and utility parcels. The revenue pie could not grow — only be re-sliced. Toggle the view, hover a line for the exact warrant figures.
Spotlight Delaware obtained parcel-level 2024 and 2025 assessment rolls from all three counties by FOIA and mapped median change by neighborhood with Tech Impact's Data Lab. In New Castle County the pattern inverted expectations: Wilmington's lowest-income blocks saw the largest percentage increases; château-country and the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend corridor saw the smallest. Hover for the reported range and the tax-bill consequence.
The Mass Appraisal Report (24 Apr 2025) publishes ratio-study statistics for its eight residential models. The International Association of Assessing Officers considers a Coefficient of Dispersion above 15 a failure of uniformity for this property type. Model 3 — the City of Wilmington — scores 22.68. Each bubble is a model; the shaded band is the IAAO acceptable range.
Bubble area is the number of verified sales used to calibrate that model. Vertical axis is COD (uniformity — lower is better). Horizontal axis is the median assessment-to-sale ratio, where 1.00 means assessments match sale prices.
After Senate Bill 228 became law without the Governor's signature on 11 Feb 2026, the County published exactly how it narrowed the universe of non-residential parcels down to a review sample. This Sankey traces that documented cascade, filter by filter.
Both rate sets below are official and apply to the same post-reassessment value, so the comparison is apples-to-apples: the July 2025 warrant (one rate for everyone) versus the revised August 2025 warrant (split rates) that the courts upheld. Enter an assessed value to see the difference.
Delaware's primary is 15 September 2026; the general election is 3 November 2026. Candidate filing closed 14 July 2026, so the field is locked. Below is every person named in the reassessment record above who appears on a New Castle County ballot — with a profile page setting out exactly what they did, how they voted, and what they said. Filter by race type, then open a profile.
Court opinions, the vendor's appraisal report, procurement files released under FOIA, ordinances, tax warrants, hearing notices and video, official FAQs, statements and public-reaction artifacts. Search by keyword or filter by type; every entry links to the original.
Assembled 15 August 2026 from public records only. Priority order: court filings and opinions, statutes and bill records, county documents and ordinances, the vendor's own report, then journalism. Where a fact exists publicly only through reporting of a hearing or a social-media post, the outlet is cited as the record rather than the underlying statement.
Known gaps in the public record, as of this compilation:
Look up any parcel — County parcel search
Appeal a valuation — Board of Assessment Review, annual deadline 14 March. BOAR · Formal appeal FAQ (PDF)
File a FOIA request — County FOIA portal · request form (PDF) · FOIA@newcastlede.gov
Read what is already released — Reassessment FOIA & RFP page
Watch the hearings — House special committee · County Council agendas & video
Check your registration and district — Delaware Dept. of Elections · 2026 primary candidate list