19%, 24%, 5% — Delaware County’s tax-increase trifecta hits average homeowner for extra $409 annually

The first draft of Delaware County’s 2026 budget proposes a nineteen percent tax increase, a move coming just one year after the county levied a 24 percent tax increase in property taxes for the current year, and a five percent hike the year before that in 2024.

Using the median home value of $255,000 as an example, that homeowner would have had a tax bill of $763 in 2023. If the nineteen percent increase is approved, and when also calculating the increases from the last two years, the same homeowner would have a tax bill next year of $1,172 — a total increase of 53 percent requiring an extra $409 per year.

In raw dollars, the operating budget increases from $321 million in 2025 to $340 million in 2026, a six percent increase.

The county posted the executive director’s proposed budget online Friday, days after Democrats, who control all five seats on the council, won resoundingly at the polls. Current council member Richard Womack was re-elected, and the county’s controller, Joanne Phillips, was promoted to the council seat being vacated by Kevin Madden, who is term-limited.

Republicans made the 24 percent tax increase for 2025 a central plank of the campaign.

Council members have complained that years of underfunding by previous Republican-controlled councils left the county in a precarious position financially. Yet it’s also clear from the current budget that the top two priorities of the Democrats who swept to power in the November 2019 elections have added to the budget’s bottom line.

For example, as Democrats campaigned to unseat Republican majorities in the prior decade, they pledged to deprivatize the county prison — a promise they fulfilled in 2022. But the costs of that move have not come in close to their estimates.

In 2021, a consultant hired by the county gave a presentation to the Jail Oversight Board, forecasting three different annual cost scenarios ranging from $49.9 million down to $43.1 million, using different assumptions in staffing levels and average daily population.

“Based on the numbers we see and the analysis we’ve done, we believe the evidence clearly demonstrates deprivatization is feasible, and the initiative will not place the county at significant financial risk, and in fact, has the potential to reduce current costs,” the consultant, said Karl Becker, senior vice president of CGL, told the oversight board in 2021.

The first full year of county-led management of the George W. Hill Correctional Facility came in mostly on-budget, at $49 million. But in the years since, the county has struggled to contain costs.

For years 2024-26, the prison’s budget has been $56 million, $59 million, and now $60.50 million, respectively. Assuming a $49 million baseline budget of what the county expected from its largest proposal from the consultant, the county has had a total of $28.5 million in three years of overruns from its management takeover of the prison. ​​That trajectory represents about a 21 percent increase in three years.

Democrats also carried through on their promise to create a county-led health department. About 70 percent of its funding comes from federal and state grants. But the share paid for directly by taxpayers has fluctuated between 20 to 30 percent, depending on how much federal funding was contributed from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. 

In 2025, Delco taxpayers contributed about $2.5 million to the new health department, a figure that was cushioned by ARPA dollars. Yet even more ARPA dollars kept the taxpayer’s burden at $0 for 2026. But ARPA was a short-term Covid-relief program: those monies won’t be available for 2027.

Based on trends from the last four years of budgets, taxpayers will be spending about another $4 to $5 million per year on the health department, according to a Broad + Liberty analysis. That analysis is largely centered on the fact that ARPA monies will disappear.

The new budget does not tap the county’s reserve fund, commonly referred to as the fund balance. But that category has been a major point of concern for the council.

When announcing the budget last year, the county acknowledged using the fund balance for general revenue had left it dangerously low. The proposed 2026 budget does not tap any fund balance dollars at all, but at the same time, does not replenish it, either. Refilling the fund balance will require spending cuts or yet more tax increases.

Womack, who was the lone ‘no’ vote on the current year’s budget, proposed a citizen-led “budget task force” to review spending with an eye towards cutting costs. 

But the budget task force has been less than transparent.

Notices and agendas for meetings of the task force or its subcommittees do not appear to have ever been publicly posted, as required by the Pennsylvania Sunshine Law. The county ignored multiple requests for lists of participants and meeting dates and times, but then quickly handed them over after being confronted with an on-camera, unscheduled interview.

The county says the task force will provide its final recommendations to the council in early December. 

“The last tax increase I voted no because I felt like we did not do a significant dive to really see where we can actually make some cuts,” Womack said in the Inquirer. “We’re doing everything possible to make sure we don’t have that type of budget tax increase again.”

In an email days after the contentious budget vote in December of 2024, Womack privately pointed the finger at his colleagues when responding to a citizen email.

“I thank you for your comments and concerns regarding the tax increase. I have some ideas I really believe would work if I could just get my colleagues to listen. I’m only one voice on Council but with the support of the public makes me a loud voice on Council which they may hear,” Womack said.

Executive Director Barbara O’Malley told the Inquirer that if the nineteen percent tax increase were passed, future tax increases should be minimal. 

That optimism will be strongly tested by the disappearance of federal funding like ARPA, whether the county can manage to cap spending growth at the prison and perhaps the health department, and how quickly the county can replenish its rainy day fund.

Todd Shepherd is Broad + Liberty’s chief investigative reporter. Send him tips at tshepherd@broadandliberty.com, or use his encrypted email at shepherdreports@protonmail.com. @shepherdreports