Scale of the event
Six numbers that define the rollout
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.
Visualization 1 · Interactive record timeline
Every document in the chain, on one axis
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.
Click any dot
Selecting an item shows what it is, who produced it, why it matters, and a direct link to the underlying document or recording.
Visualization 2 · Burden shift
How rates moved when HB 242 split them
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.
Visualization 3 · Who got hit
The increase landed hardest on the poorest neighborhoods
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.
Visualization 4 · Appraisal quality, by the vendor's own numbers
Tyler's report flags Wilmington itself as out of standard
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.
Hover a bubble
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.
Visualization 5 · The scrutiny funnel
From 11,919 commercial parcels to 50 actually re-examined
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.
Interactive · Bill comparator
What the split rate did to your school tax
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.
Accountability · Who is on your 2026 ballot
Everyone in this record who is asking for your vote
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.
Document library
The underlying record, searchable
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.
Method, caveats and gaps
What this page is — and what it cannot tell you
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:
- No published final report from the joint House/Senate Special Property Reassessment committees; their recommendations surfaced instead as the June 2026 bill package and two working-group resolutions.
- The County Auditor's review of Tyler's work proceeded without a Council mandate after Resolution 25-150 failed 7-6; no completed public audit report has been posted.
- The July 2025 Tackett/Toole audit press release survives only in press reproductions and in the County Executive's reference to it.
- Roll call on Ordinance 25-099 is recorded publicly only as 12-1; the single dissenting vote is not identified in available records.
- Outcome of Resolution 25-157 (reassessment task force), pulled from the 9 September 2025 agenda, is not established.
- Parcel-level assessment rolls are public but not published as bulk downloads by the County; the only comprehensive comparison in circulation is Spotlight Delaware's FOIA dataset.