Delaware County councilors are preparing to approve a 23% property tax enhance as the county grapples with severe budget shortfalls.
Officials faced fierce opposition from county residents concerned about rising costs of living during public meetings Tuesday and Wednesday, but insisted they were left with few options to maintain county services in the face of high inflation and a depletion of federal Covid-19 relief dollars. .
“No entity can cope with inflation costs and fixed income. The math just doesn’t work,” council member Kevin Madden said Wednesday. “We were hoping we could pull a rabbit out of a hat and still keep revenues relatively stable… but this county has been kicked in the head for decades. They have not invested in their infrastructure.”
The council is scheduled to vote on the enhance and the district’s overall 2025 budget next week.
The proposed enhance, County Executive Barbara O’Malley said, would mean an enhance of about $185 a year for the typical homeowner in Delaware County, while one-third of homeowners in the county would see an enhance of less than $100.
O’Malley said the enhance became necessary because Delaware County’s revenues were growing slower than other Philadelphia counties and had not kept pace with inflation. The Delaware County Council voted to raise taxes by 5% last year, but O’Malley said a more dramatic enhance was necessary after momentary federal pandemic relief funds ran out.
“It was going to end anyway and we had to balance our budget year after year,” she said.
However, the enhance caused extreme frustration among community members during public comment hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. Residents argued they were already facing mounting financial pressures due to high inflation and urged the county to seek budget cuts rather than raising interest rates.
“If we lost our apartment, we wouldn’t even be able to afford to buy an apartment,” said Helen Struckmann, a media resident whose husband is disabled.
Many speakers pointed to the raise as evidence of financial mismanagement by the Democratic-controlled board. They focused mainly on actions taken by Democrats to enhance county services, including the creation of a county health department and deprivatization county jail.
“The county has to be like its citizens: It has to find ways to reduce costs,” said Todd Hall, a Havertown resident who addressed councilors Wednesday night.
But councilors argued that they had worked difficult to keep costs down and said the raises were primarily the result of rising wages for all county employees.
“Because we were trying to fill extremely difficult positions … we had to pay more,” council member Christine Reuther said in an interview. “That drives our expenses more.”
Council Vice President Richard Womack said Tuesday that he would prefer to hold off on the tax enhance and establish a commission to examine the budget.
“I think we have sticker shock at the moment,” he said.
But most of the council showed reluctant support for the enhance, blaming 12 years of no tax increases under Republican leadership as the reason for the dramatic enhance.
Madden pointed to a series of earnest infrastructure problems and underfunded district services that the Democratic-controlled board inherited in 2020, and said the tax enhance came only after a series of budget-tightening efforts.
“We have not invested in the government’s service delivery efforts for over a decade, and the board is in a position where we need to raise revenue to invest and bring the government to the level it needs to be to serve the public,” he added. council member Elaine Schaefer said Tuesday.
Schaefer said she thought the raise could have been lower, and added Tuesday that she wasn’t sure yet whether she would vote for the enhance.
The other three members – Madden, Chairwoman Monica Taylor and Reuther – expressed support for the enhance. Taylor said that as inflation continues to rise, further increases may be necessary in future years.
“I don’t take a tax increase and doing something like this lightly, and I’m really concerned 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 remember the services that we have to provide and that in most cases we are obliged to provide.”
