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Delaware County’s proposed 2027 budget includes no property tax increases for the first time since 2023.
The tentative $997.1 million total budget is 5.4% higher than the previous year, but the county will be able to cover the costs without relying on the general fund or American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
“When you’re a largely developed and built- out county, you’ve only got one real way to raise more money and that’s to raise the mill rate,” Delaware County Council Vice Chair Christine Reuther said. “But this year, I’m glad we don’t have to do it, but it is going to be a tight budget.”
The debut of the proposed budget comes after two consecutive years of double-digit tax hikes that angered residents and divided members of the all-Democratic Delaware County Council.
“We want to try to give our residents a break,” Council Chair Richard Womack. “We don’t want to continue to balance the budget on their backs and we know that there has been a poor economy.”
Council members who voted 4-1 in favor of the 2026 budget sought to close the county’s long-standing structural deficit with a 19% property tax increase. Councilmember Elaine Paul Schaefer, who was the lone dissenting vote, felt the hike was too drastic given the economic environment.
“There’s nothing less unhealthy than a group of people who don’t question each other and everything that’s in front of them running a government,” Schaefer said. “I’d say that this council shares a value system and shares an outlook of how government should work. That doesn’t mean that we agree on every single measure and how to achieve that value system.”
Democrats in 2019 took control of Delaware County Council for the first time since the Civil War.
Ultimately, all of the council members placed the blame for the 2026 tax hike on the previous Republican majority that went years without approving tax increases at expense of significant projects, such as the creation of a health department and the deprivatization of the George W. Hill Correctional Facility.
