The Contract Was Written to Pay the Vendor. It Did.
The Truthline Brief | Tyler Technologies, Inc., the clause that moved your tax notice, and the county that never collected a dollar it was owed.
A Truthline Brief by Karen Hartley-Nagle, Founder and Publisher, Former President of New Castle County Council, November 2016 to November 2024. Published October 28, 2026.
Tyler Technologies, Inc. has conducted reassessments in Missouri, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Delaware that ended in lawsuits, rollback orders, withheld payments and legislative hearings. It has never lost a judgment over any of them. New Castle County signed the contract that explains why, paid it in full, and is preparing to do it again.
On January 28, 2021, New Castle County issued a request for proposals for its first reassessment in four decades. The request required a 20 percent retainage on every bill until the contract was satisfactorily complete, 40 percent more if the vendor fell behind, and said values would not be accepted until they met the International Association of Assessing Officers’ ratio standard. The County awarded the work to Tyler Technologies, Inc. on April 16, 2021. The contract County Council adopted on July 13, 2021, carried 10 percent retainage released on completion, liquidated damages capped at $275,000 and waivable, a clause letting Tyler shift the entire project two years in its sole discretion if it fell behind, and Section G(5), which excludes claims related to valuation of property. Tyler used the clause on March 31, 2022. The notices went out November 5, 2024. Tyler’s own report shows Wilmington failing the contract’s standard at a coefficient of dispersion of 22.68. The County paid $15,232,207.74 and collected nothing.
Qui tacet consentire videtur.
He who is silent is taken to agree.
Contents
I. The clause the Council did not read
II. The protections the County wrote, and then took out
III. What the protections were worth
IV. The city that failed the standard
V. Nobody has ever beaten Tyler
VI. Same vendor, two counties that got it right
VII. The cloud the roll now lives in
VIII. What the next contract has to say
Key Facts
Questions Residents Are Asking
Author’s Disclosure
The Evidence File
The Contract Was Written to Pay the Vendor. It Did.
New Castle County wrote a 20 percent retainage and a ratio-study acceptance test into its own 2021 request for bids, awarded the contract to Tyler Technologies, Inc., and then signed an agreement with 10 percent retainage, a $275,000 penalty cap, a vendor-controlled two-year schedule shift, and no liability for valuation claims.
I. The clause the Council did not read
The July 13, 2021, vote, Section C(2.2), the March 31, 2022, letter, and the Option 2 calendar.
On the night of July 13, 2021, I was presiding over New Castle County Council from the chamber at 800 North French Street. It was the pandemic. Thirteen members were voting and three of us were in the room: Council member George Smiley, Council member Kenneth R. Woods and I. The other ten were on the screen. Resolution 21-110 had been introduced on June 8, tabled, and came off the table that night.
When the item came up, I was told the camera on the President’s seat had failed. Council member George Smiley, sponsor of the resolution and co-chair of the Administrative-Finance Committee, did not wait for it to be fixed. He took the item, moved it, and called the vote. I could not be heard. I had questions, written out after a telephone call with the finance director the week before, and I did not get to ask one. Council member George Smiley told the clerk I had voted yes. The minutes record thirteen yes votes, mine among them: William Bell, David Carter, John Cartier, Lisa Diller, Dee Durham, Penrose Hollins, Janet Kilpatrick, Timothy P. Sheldon, George Smiley, Jea P. Street, David Tackett, Kenneth R. Woods and Karen Hartley-Nagle, 13 to 0, to sign a Software as a Service and Professional Services Agreement with Tyler Technologies, Inc. at a total estimated cost of $14,350,738, plus reimbursables.
When the vote was over, the camera worked, and it worked for the rest of the meeting. Council member George Smiley and Council member Kenneth R. Woods, in the same room on the same system, had no trouble with a camera that night. Ordinance 21-078, the $8,000,000 appropriation that funded the contract, came off the table later in the same meeting and was adopted 13 to 0.
“Three members in the room. One camera failed, on the President’s seat, on the one item I had questions about. The sponsor called the vote, told the clerk my answer, and the camera came back. That is the record of how
New Castle County approved the contract.”
At the earlier meeting where the resolution was tabled, my hand was up with a question. Council member John Cartier, the committee co-chair presiding, moved on. No other member asked a question about the contract, in committee or on the floor, at any meeting where it was heard.
I read the entire contract. I asked about the entire contract, by telephone to the finance director the week before the vote and in committee, where the July 13, 2021, minutes record Council member Penrose Hollins and Council member John Cartier commenting and Chief of Technology and Administrative Services Michael Hojnicki answering.
What Council was told was that the language was standard. What Council was not told was why that language was chosen, who chose it, or what it would do to the residents of New Castle County. The County’s own experts, the people paid to know, said it was standard and left it there. Council members are not attorneys or appraisers and are not expected to be. We are expected to be briefed, in depth, with all of it, before we vote. We were not. After the reassessment, we could see how much had not been shared.
The contractor had been chosen before Council saw a word of it. Bid 21PP-001, Real Property Reassessment Project, was posted on January 28, 2021. The pre-proposal meeting was held February 10, 2021, and recorded. Proposals closed March 10, 2021. The agreement’s own recitals say the County “awarded Tyler the contract” on April 16, 2021, “subject to the negotiation of a final contract between the parties.” Resolution 21-110 reached the Administrative-Finance Committee on June 8, 2021, on a revised agenda whose footnote reads: “The agenda was revised to add R21-110… These items were not known at the time of original posting.” Seven days’ notice, for a $14 million contract awarded seven weeks earlier.
What Council received was the resolution and the agreement attached to it. I did not know the pre-proposal recording existed until after the reassessment had started. The bid page with the Request for Proposals, its five attachments and its addendum was not provided to Council, and when I looked for more on the County website in 2021, it was not there. It is there today. Attachment E to that Request for Proposals is the International Association of Assessing Officers’ own Mass Appraisal Revaluation Template. The administration had the standard in hand when it wrote the contract that failed it.
At a Delaware Association of Counties meeting in 2021, a member from Sussex County told me that Matt Meyer had decided to extend the New Castle County reassessment completion to 2024, after the election. The contract gave the vendor the power to make that happen without a vote. Here is what Section C(2.2) said.
The agreement carried two calendars. Project Schedule Option 1 set the date of value at July 1, 2022, and completed the reassessment by February 15, 2023. Project Schedule Option 2 set the date of value at July 1, 2024, and completed it by February 15, 2025. Section C(2.2) said which calendar would govern: if Tyler Technologies, Inc. had not completed at least 50 percent of the data collection required for County Sign-Off Document 3 by February 1, 2022, then Tyler Technologies, Inc., “in its sole discretion,” could move the entire project to Option 2. The County’s consent was required only if the vendor wanted more time for a reason other than its own failure to collect data.
“If the vendor fell behind, the vendor got two more years. If the vendor kept pace, the vendor needed the County’s permission to slow down. The clause rewarded the failure
and punished the County for it, and the County signed it.”
On March 31, 2022, Jake Wilson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Appraisal Services at Tyler Technologies, Inc., wrote to Nicholas J. Brannick, Finance Legal Officer in the New Castle County Office of Law. The letter gave notice under Section C(2.2) that Tyler Technologies, Inc. “made the decision to proceed with Project Schedule Option #2.” It reported 26,496 parcels inspected of 212,046, which is 12.5 percent of the work against a 50 percent trigger. It said Tyler Technologies, Inc. had two residential team leads in the field in September 2021 and 22 by March 24, 2022, with 26 positions still open, and that “the current employment market made the original 2023 schedule impossible to achieve.”
That is the vendor’s account, in the vendor’s letter. I was Council President in the fall of 2021 and the winter of 2022. Residents who had applied to Tyler Technologies, Inc. for those field jobs called me because nobody called them back. Two people who had been hired called me because they had been sent into the field with no training. One of them quit, and told me she would not work for a company run that way; she just wanted me to know what was happening. The vendor that could not return an applicant’s call or train the people it did hire told the County it could not find people, and the contract the County signed made that letter the end of the discussion.
County Executive Marcus Henry confirmed the shift himself. On September 30, 2025, he told the General Assembly’s Joint Special Committee on Property Reassessment: “In March of 2022, Tyler exercised its contractual option to extend the deadline for completion of the reassessment in New Castle County. That option allowed Tyler to extend the February 15, 2023 deadline for finalization of the assessment role by two years, to February 15, 2025.”
Count what the letter cost. Section C(4.3) of the agreement says the shift to Option 2 “shall not constitute additional work,” so the $11,152,888 appraisal fee did not move. Section F(1) says the shift extends the Software as a Service initial term from three years to five, which raised the software fees in Exhibit A from $1,708,290 to $2,847,150, an additional $1,138,860 to Tyler Technologies, Inc. for taking longer. Exhibit B, Section 2.3(b) says the liquidated damages, $400 and $750 a day, are measured against “option #1 or #2 as applicable.” The shift erased every day of lateness on the first calendar.
“Twelve and a half percent of the parcels. Two more years. $1,138,860 more in software fees. A fresh clock on the penalties. That is what Section C(2.2) was worth to the
contractor on the day it wrote the letter.”
The County’s own final report to the Court of Chancery, for the quarter ending March 31, 2025, shows Option 2 carried out to the day. Data collection ran from September 1, 2021, to July 1, 2024. County Sign-Off Document 3 fell on July 1, 2024. Valuation review ran from July 15 to October 15, 2024. The assessment disclosure notice was scheduled for October 15 through November 5, 2024, and mailed on November 5, 2024. The general election was November 5, 2024.
So when County Executive Marcus Henry told the committee that the prior administration refused to send notices in the summer of 2024, and when Governor Matt Meyer’s office answered with a Tyler Technologies, Inc. schedule showing a November mailing, both were holding the same piece of paper. The schedule was the Option 2 schedule. It existed because of a letter dated March 31, 2022. The notice window that landed on top of a governor’s election was set thirty-one months before that election, by the contractor, under a clause that let the contractor set its own deadline.
II. The protections the County wrote, and then took out
RFP Section 8 and Section 4.21 against the signed contract.
The Request for Proposals the County issued on January 28, 2021, is a better contract than the contract. Read Section 8, Payment Schedule and Penalty, as the County wrote it for every bidder to see: payment “representing eighty percent (80%) of the amount billed. The remaining twenty percent (20%) will be retained by the County. The entire amount so retained will be paid to the contractor within thirty (30) days following satisfactory completion of the terms of the contract.”
Then the next paragraph: “If the project administrator determines that, due to the fault of the contractor, the project is not progressing satisfactorily on schedule, an additional forty percent (40%) of the bill will be retained,” and if the problem is not fixed in thirty days the County may have “the work satisfactorily completed at its own expense and the cost thereof deducted from the retainage.”
Read Section 4.21, Ratio Studies: studies “must be performed after every key step in process,” the project monitor “may perform independent ratio studies on behalf of the project administrator,” and then one sentence on its own line: “Values will not be accepted until they satisfy the IAAO Standard on Ratio Studies.” Read Section 4.20: a preliminary mass appraisal report “shall be provided to the County prior to mailing change of assessment notices.”
“Twenty percent held until the contract was done. Forty percent more if the vendor fell behind. Values not accepted until they passed the standard. That is what the County
asked for in January 2021. None of it survived to June.”
Now read what Council was handed. Ten percent retainage, released on completion of the appraisal services. No 40 percent clause for a vendor behind schedule. Instead, Section C(2.2), which handed a vendor behind schedule two more years. No sentence refusing to accept values that fail the standard. Instead, a written report. Liquidated damages capped at $275,000 and waivable. Section G(5), excluding claims related to valuation of property. The RFP said the County would decide when the values were good enough to pay for. The contract said the vendor would decide when it was done.
Between the award on April 16, 2021, and the revised agenda of June 8, 2021, every protection the County had written for itself was negotiated down or out, and Council was told the result was standard language. The County’s own RFP is the proof that it was not. The administration had the International Association of Assessing Officers’ Mass Appraisal Revaluation Template as Attachment E, the Association’s ratio standard in Section 4.21, and its own 20 percent and 40 percent retainage in Section 8, and it signed a contract with none of them.
“The administration did not fail to know the standard. It wrote the standard into the request for bids, awarded the contract, and then wrote the standard out of the contract.
Council saw only the second document.”
And Council was told the calendar. On December 12, 2023, Tyler Technologies, Inc. presented a reassessment update to County Council: 194,702 parcels inspected, 92 percent; three field teams; data mailers February through August 2024; and “Notice of Tentative Assessed Values: November 2024.” The November mailing was on a slide in Council chambers eleven months before the election. It was the Option 2 calendar, which the vendor had set in March 2022, under a clause the administration wrote.
III. What the protections were worth
Retainage, liquidated damages, the liability cap, Section G(5), and the check.
The Appraisal Services Statement of Work, under the heading Model Quality Assurance, commits Tyler Technologies, Inc. to run ratio study tests “before public disclosure of the new values and again after any informal appeal process,” and prints the table: single-family residential in newer or more homogeneous areas, a coefficient of dispersion of 5 to 10; single-family residential in older or more heterogeneous areas, 5 to 15; income-producing properties in larger areas, 5 to 15; a price-related differential of .98 to 1.03 for every class. Those are the International Association of Assessing Officers’ numbers, and they are in the contract.
Then the consequence: “In the unusual case where these standards may not be met, a written report explaining the results of the study and recommendations will be presented to the jurisdiction prior to the public disclosure process.” A written report. No dollar of the contract turned on the answer.
“The contract had the right numbers in it. Fail them,
and the vendor owed the County a memo.”
The payment terms, Exhibit B, Section 2.3(a), withhold 10 percent from every four-week appraisal invoice and release it “upon completion of the Appraisal Services,” which is before the first formal appeal is heard. Cushman & Wakefield Regional, LLC, in the report County Executive Marcus Henry released on October 22, 2026, lists as a best practice “a retainage clause so the vendor is not paid in full until the values survive appeal.” The County had a retainage clause. It released on completion.
The liquidated damages, Exhibit B, Section 2.3(b), run $400 a day for County Sign-Off Documents 1 through 6 and $750 a day for Sign-Off Document 7, “to a maximum of Two Hundred Seventy-Five Thousand Dollars,” and “the Client may waive application of the foregoing liquidated damages as to any County Sign Off Document for good cause shown.” A $275,000 cap on a $14,350,738 contract, waivable by the same administration that approved every schedule.
Section G(4.1) caps Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s liability for the appraisal work at its own fee, $11,152,888. Section G(6.4) requires professional liability insurance of $1,000,000 per occurrence and $3,000,000 aggregate, and Section G(6.6.1) names New Castle County as additional insured on the general liability and automobile policies, not the professional liability policy.
And then Section G(5), the sentence that makes every other protection decorative: “IN NO EVENT SHALL WE BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF TAX REVENUE OR CLAIMS RELATED TO VALUATION OF PROPERTY.”
“The County hired a company to value property, and signed a contract in which the company is not liable for claims related to the valuation of property. Read it twice. Then ask who drafted it, and who on the County side
read it before I called the roll.”
Now set the contract beside the check. The Council approved $14,350,738. The County’s final report to the Court of Chancery states it had paid Tyler Technologies, Inc. $15,232,207.74 by March 31, 2025, $881,469.74 more than the figure the Council approved. On September 30, 2025, County Executive Marcus Henry put the County’s spending on the project at $20 million. Paid-to-date above the approved figure means nothing was being held. The retainage was gone. No liquidated damages appear in any filing the County made to the court. The protections were worth exactly what the County collected on them, which was nothing.
IV. The city that failed the standard
Wilmington at 22.68.
Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s own mass appraisal report for the 2025 reassessment, published by the County, splits the City of Wilmington, Zone 3, into two residential models because of “the heterogeneity of the residential housing stock in the City of Wilmington.” The main Wilmington model, built on 1,078 sales, shows a coefficient of dispersion of 22.68, a price-related differential of 1.07, and a price-related bias of negative 0.22. The contract’s ceiling for older, heterogeneous residential areas is 15. The contract’s price-related differential range is .98 to 1.03.
Tyler Technologies, Inc. wrote the failure down in its own words: “For Zone 3, the COD of 22.68 is above the acceptable upper threshold of 15.0.” It wrote the reason down too: “the interior condition of the housing stock is a major driver of value and was not reasonably ascertained during an exterior inspection of the parcels in Zone 3.” The vendor certified that the drive-by method did not work in Wilmington, and delivered the Wilmington values anyway.
“Tyler’s own report says Wilmington failed the contract’s standard. Tyler’s own report says why: nobody went inside. The County certified the roll with that paragraph
in its hands.”
The Statement of Work required a written report to the County, before public disclosure, explaining any result outside the standard. Whether Tyler Technologies, Inc. delivered that report for Wilmington, and what the Office of Finance did with it before the notices went out on November 5, 2024, is the single question in this entire record that a County official could answer in one sentence, and none has. The County mailed the notices. The County certified the roll on February 19, 2025. The residents of Wilmington filed their appeals.
Then it got worse. The Cushman & Wakefield Regional, LLC review of 50 commercial parcels, dated October 2, 2026, found that the County does not perform sales ratio studies at all, and that the source of the base rates and land values in the County’s cost models could not be determined. The County wrote a ratio standard into its contract, and the County has no ratio study of its own to test it with. The only numbers anyone has are the vendor’s numbers, about the vendor’s work, in the vendor’s report.
V. Nobody has ever beaten Tyler
Jackson County, Anoka, Lackawanna, and why.
The question residents ask me most is why New Castle County did not sue. The answer is that nobody wins, and the reasons nobody wins are written into contracts like ours.
Jackson County, Missouri, hired Tyler Technologies, Inc. for an $18 million reassessment. Parcel data due in October 2022 arrived in February 2023. Residents saw increases of 30 percent on average and some above 80 percent. On June 20, 2023, property owners filed a class action against Tyler Technologies, Inc. and the county, alleging late notices and no physical inspections where state law required them. On August 7, 2023, the Jackson County Legislature adopted Resolution 21358, directing the County Executive to withhold every future payment tied to assessment services until the Legislature voted to release it; about $6 million was held.
On December 19, 2023, the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled unanimously for Tyler Technologies, Inc. and the county: the homeowners had to exhaust the Board of Equalization and the State Tax Commission before they could sue. In August 2024, the Missouri State Tax Commission ordered Jackson County to roll its 2023 assessments back to 2021 values plus 15 percent. In August 2025, Circuit Judge Jacqueline Cook ordered the county to subpoena Tyler Technologies, Inc. for its insurance policy, because the plaintiffs want the $6 million in coverage as a fund to repay homeowners.
“Missouri had a State Tax Commission that could roll the values back, a State Auditor who could demand the data, and a Legislature that held $6 million until it was satisfied. The vendor still walked. Delaware has none of the three.”
Anoka County, Minnesota, sued Tyler Technologies, Inc. in federal court in July 2020 for breach of contract after a property, tax and land records system due in July 2018 was still not delivered after two extensions, and residents got their tax statements late. Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, paid Tyler Technologies, Inc. $5.1 million for a reassessment of 102,503 parcels and then told a judge in November 2025 that the required notices had gone out wrong and some owners had six days to appeal; Judge James Gibbons denied the county’s request for a year’s delay in a one-sentence order, and the county never sued the vendor.
No court anywhere has entered a judgment against Tyler Technologies, Inc. over a reassessment. Three walls stand between a resident and the vendor. The duty to assess, inspect and notify belongs to the assessor by statute, so the resident’s claim runs against the county. The resident must exhaust the appeal board first. And the contract caps the vendor’s exposure at its fee and, in New Castle County’s case, excludes valuation claims outright.
Where accountability has reached the vendor at all, it has been money held back by a legislature with the nerve to hold it, a state commission with the power to order values corrected, and an insurance policy a judge made the county go and get. New Castle County Council held nothing.
On August 26, 2025, Council voted seven to six against a resolution asking the County Auditor to examine the reassessment methodology, with Council member Jea P. Street calling the proposal “a hoax.” Delaware has no state tax commission, no state board of equalization, and no state auditor with jurisdiction over county assessment. Senate Bill 228 gave the Office of Finance a correction power that expires March 31, 2027, and wrote in subsection (h) that the law “does not create any private cause action to force, mandate, or otherwise require the Office of Finance conduct a quality control review upon any specific parcel.” No resident can compel a review. After March 31, 2027, nobody can.
VI. Same vendor, two counties that got it right
Kent and Sussex on October 7, 2025.
Kent County and Sussex County hired the same vendor in 2021, ran the same software, used the same exterior-only inspections, and testified about it before the Joint Special Committee on Property Reassessment on October 7, 2025. Their testimony is the hardest evidence in Delaware of what New Castle County did wrong, because it removes the vendor as the variable.
Sussex County has 203,000 parcels. Gina Jennings, Sussex County Finance Director, told the committee the total cost of the reassessment was $10 million, of which $9 million went to Tyler Technologies, Inc. New Castle County has 214,000 parcels and had paid Tyler Technologies, Inc. $15,232,207.74 by March 2025. Sussex paid about $44 a parcel to the vendor. New Castle paid about $71, and kept paying.
Todd Lawson, Sussex County Administrator, said the Sussex contract specified when the mailers went to residents. Gina Jennings said Sussex held virtual and in-person town halls, met individually with every town, met with school district finance officers, published a tax calculator, and ran a second newspaper advertisement when formal appeals came in under 1 percent because she wanted more people to appeal, not fewer. She said municipal building permits in Sussex are shared with the County from every town, “unlike the City of Wilmington.” And she said this: “Sussex County was working on the data as Tyler Technologies was providing it, so there were no surprises.”
“Sussex worked the data as the vendor delivered it. New Castle County let the vendor deliver the data, then discovered what was in it from its residents’ appeals.”
Kevin Sipple, Kent County Administrator, said Kent held two workshops before the work began and town halls after, and that 40 to 60 percent of Kent appeals produced changed values, which he called the normal range for an exterior-inspection reassessment. State Representative Kim Williams said New Castle County “skipped this step and did not engage with stakeholders.” State Senator Spiros Mantzavinos put New Castle County’s numbers beside them: 52 percent of informal appeals and 65 percent of formal appeals produced changed values.
Asked whether the counties had talked to New Castle County about best practices, Cheryl Bundek of the Kent County assessment office said New Castle County requested documents from Kent at the start of its formal appeals and never communicated again. Gina Jennings said she reached out to New Castle County and did not receive a response.
Justin Eimers, Assessment Advisor for the International Association of Assessing Officers, testified the same day. Asked whether Delaware should write the International Association of Assessing Officers’ standards into statute, he said yes. Asked what other states do when a jurisdiction fails the ratio standards, he said they “may require reappraisal of the jurisdiction, equalization of values, and removal of the assessor.” He recommended that “an independent entity should complete a sales ratio study” and “strict oversight of Delaware’s annual reassessments.” Delaware has written none of it into law.
Gina Jennings also told the committee Sussex County has quotes for its next reassessment totaling $15 million, at $65 a parcel in year five. The five-year clock is running in all three counties, and Tyler Technologies, Inc. holds every parcel record in all three.
VII. The cloud the roll now lives in
Enterprise Assessment, Amazon Web Services, Boxwood, and the next procurement.
The County’s final report to the Court of Chancery records that the Assessment Office “is now utilizing Enterprise Assessment as their CAMA system to be effective for Tax Year 2025.” Enterprise Assessment is the renamed iasWorld, Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s cloud product. The legacy Hansen system remains the system of record for deed recording, permitting and assessor workflows while its data is converted into Enterprise Assessment. Every parcel in New Castle County now lives in Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s cloud, and the Software as a Service term that pays for it runs five years under Option 2.
The cloud was in the deal from the first page. The Request for Proposals required every bidder to sign a Cloud Services Agreement, Attachment D, and Section F(6.2) of the agreement says the County “will be hosted on shared hardware in a Tyler data center or in a third-party data center.” The third-party data center is named in Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s own announcements.
Tyler Technologies, Inc. signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Amazon Web Services in 2019 and an expanded eight-year agreement on February 5, 2024, to move its product line to Amazon Web Services, which Amazon owns. Tyler Technologies, Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Lynn Moore said the expanded agreement “supports our Tyler 2030 vision to complete our transition to the cloud.”
The largest commercial taxpayer in New Castle County is Amazon. The Amazon fulfillment center at the former General Motors Boxwood plant near Newport sold for $392 million. The 2024 reassessment valued it at $108 million. In July 2026, after residents and legislators named it, the County raised the value by more than $260 million to more than $372 million. For the 2025 tax year, the roll Tyler Technologies, Inc. built and the County certified carried Amazon’s warehouse at less than a third of its sale price.
“The vendor’s cloud partner was the county’s biggest commercial taxpayer. The vendor’s model gave that taxpayer the largest single undervaluation on the roll. Nobody in County government found it. Residents did.”
The connection is a matter of public record. The sequence is a matter of public record. The benefit, one tax year at a fraction of market value, is arithmetic. What follows from it is a question for the next contract, and the next contract is being written now.
County Executive Marcus Henry’s fifth recommendation to the committee on September 30, 2025, was that the State Department of Finance “fund, procure and execute a procurement services agreement with an assessment vendor,” so that all three counties buy assessment services through one State contract and “only use these State-approved vendors.” On October 22, 2026, he announced the County will hire a national third-party expert, at a price not published, to help write the next Request for Proposals, for a reassessment with a July 1, 2028, base date.
Kent County hired Tyler Technologies, Inc. in 2021 as the lower of two qualified bidders. Sussex County hired Tyler Technologies, Inc. because it submitted the lowest bid, $5 million. A single statewide procurement, run with the incumbent holding every record in every county and the State’s own 911 dispatch, fire records and open data portal already on Tyler Technologies, Inc. platforms, has one likely outcome. The County that could not enforce a $14 million contract would be a party to the largest assessment contract in Delaware’s history.
VIII. What the next contract has to say
Twelve terms and the March 31, 2027, cliff.
The International Association of Assessing Officers publishes a Standard on Contracting for Assessment Services. It says the agency should not pay in full “until it has been satisfactorily delivered and tested for completion,” that a percentage should be withheld “until the final approval and sign-off have taken place,” that a performance bond of up to 100 percent of the contract may be appropriate, that the solicitation should state whether interior inspections are required, and that the contract should carry “compensation or penalty payments to the agency in the event of failure to perform.” The 2021 agreement met almost none of it. The next one has to, and here is what that means in plain terms.
Strike Section C(2.2). No vendor may move its own deadline in its sole discretion for its own failure. A schedule change requires a vote of County Council in public session.
Strike Section G(5) as it applies to valuation. A company hired to value property must be liable for claims related to the valuation of property, inside the liability cap, not outside it.
Make the numbers conditions of payment. The coefficient of dispersion and price-related differential thresholds by property class go in as acceptance criteria, tested by an independent sales ratio study the County commissions and publishes before any notice goes out, with each payment milestone conditioned on passing. A memo is not a consequence.
Hold the retainage until the values survive appeal: 10 percent until twelve months after Board of Assessment Review decisions are final. Add a performance bond.
Tie liquidated damages to quality as well as calendar, remove the $275,000 cap, and remove the County’s power to waive them.
Name the key personnel and the staffing plan with hiring milestones and a right to terminate if they are missed. Two residential team leads for 212,046 parcels is a default, not a labor market.
Require interior inspection sampling, or income and expense data under the Senate Bill 230 subpoena power, for every zone that fails the standard, with the City of Wilmington named in the contract.
Write the County’s own obligations in with dates: municipal permit data from every town under House Bill 460, a sales verification protocol, and a County-owned procedures manual delivered as a contract deliverable, so the next review can find out where the numbers came from.
Separate the software contract from the appraisal contract, with data ownership, export format and transition assistance written into both, so the County can bid the next reassessment without rebidding the system that holds its records.
Bar the vendor from billing the County to testify against the County’s own taxpayers at appeal.
Raise the professional liability coverage and name the County as additional insured on that policy.
And publish the draft before it is bid.
“Every one of those terms was available in 2021. Every one is in the International Association of Assessing Officers’ own standard. The County signed a contract without them, paid it in full, and is now hiring an expert to tell it
what the standard says.”
None of that reaches the structural problem. After March 31, 2027, when Senate Bill 228 expires, there will be no body in Delaware with authority to tell any county that its assessment roll is wrong. Missouri had a State Tax Commission. Pennsylvania has a State Tax Equalization Board. Maryland reassesses a third of the state every year under a State Department of Assessments and Taxation. Delaware has a legislative committee that was convened in September 2025, and three counties about to buy the same product from the same vendor, one of them through a procurement its County Executive would like the State to run.
Residents do not have to wait for the General Assembly. Every property owner can file a correction request for a factual error at any time through the Assessment Office at 302-395-5520 or online. Every property owner can appeal through the Board of Assessment Review when the window opens January 1, 2027. Every resident can read Section C(2.2) and Section G(5) of the agreement on the County’s own website, under Resolution 21-110, and ask the Council member who represents them whether those sections will be in the next one.
“The vendor wrote its own deadline. The vendor excluded its own liability. The County paid above the approved figure and collected nothing. And the County is about to do it again, on a bigger contract, with the same vendor, before the law that could stop it expires. That is the record.
Read the contract before they sign the next one.”
Key Facts
Resolution 21-110 was introduced June 8, 2021, tabled, and lifted from the table and adopted 13 to 0 on July 13, 2021, authorizing the Tyler Technologies, Inc. agreement at a total estimated cost of $14,350,738 plus reimbursables. Ordinance 21-078, appropriating $8,000,000, was adopted 13 to 0 later in the same meeting.
Request for Proposals 21PP-001, issued January 28, 2021, required a 20 percent retainage released thirty days after satisfactory completion of the contract, an additional 40 percent retainage if the project fell behind through the contractor’s fault, ratio studies after every key step with values “not accepted until they satisfy the IAAO Standard on Ratio Studies,” and a preliminary mass appraisal report before notices were mailed. The agreement’s recitals state the County awarded the contract to Tyler Technologies, Inc. on April 16, 2021, subject to negotiation.
The June 8, 2021, Administrative-Finance Committee agenda was revised to add R21-110, with a footnote stating the item was not known at the time of original posting.
On December 12, 2023, Tyler Technologies, Inc. presented to County Council a schedule showing 92 percent of parcels inspected and a Notice of Tentative Assessed Values in November 2024.
Section C(2.2) of the agreement allowed Tyler Technologies, Inc., in its sole discretion, to shift the project from a July 1, 2022, value date to a July 1, 2024, value date if it had not completed 50 percent of data collection for County Sign-Off Document 3 by February 1, 2022.
By letter dated March 31, 2022, Jake Wilson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Appraisal Services, Tyler Technologies, Inc., notified Nicholas J. Brannick, Finance Legal Officer, New Castle County Office of Law, that 26,496 of 212,046 parcels had been inspected and that Tyler Technologies, Inc. had decided to proceed under Project Schedule Option 2.
The shift extended the Software as a Service term from three years to five, raising software fees from $1,708,290 to $2,847,150 under Section F(1) and Exhibit A, and reset the schedule against which liquidated damages are measured under Exhibit B, Section 2.3(b).
County Executive Marcus Henry told the Joint Special Committee on Property Reassessment on September 30, 2025, that Tyler Technologies, Inc. exercised its contractual option in March 2022 to extend the completion deadline by two years to February 15, 2025.
The County’s final report to the Court of Chancery for the quarter ending March 31, 2025, shows the assessment disclosure notice scheduled for October 15 through November 5, 2024, and mailed November 5, 2024, the date of the general election.
The Appraisal Services Statement of Work commits the reassessment to International Association of Assessing Officers ratio standards, including a coefficient of dispersion of 5 to 15 for older, heterogeneous residential areas and a price-related differential of .98 to 1.03, with ratio studies run before public disclosure. The stated consequence for failing the standard is a written report to the County.
The agreement withholds 10 percent retainage released upon completion of Appraisal Services, sets liquidated damages of $400 a day for County Sign-Off Documents 1 through 6 and $750 a day for Sign-Off Document 7 capped at $275,000 and waivable by the County, caps appraisal liability at the $11,152,888 fee under Section G(4.1), and excludes “claims related to valuation of property” from Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s liability under Section G(5).
The County reported paying Tyler Technologies, Inc. $15,232,207.74 as of March 31, 2025, $881,469.74 above the figure the Council approved. County Executive Marcus Henry put the County’s spending on the project at $20 million on September 30, 2025.
Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s mass appraisal report shows the main City of Wilmington residential model at a coefficient of dispersion of 22.68, a price-related differential of 1.07 and a price-related bias of negative 0.22, and states the interior condition of the housing stock “was not reasonably ascertained during an exterior inspection.”
The Cushman & Wakefield Regional, LLC review dated October 2, 2026, states the County does not perform sales ratio studies and that the source of the base rates and land values in the County’s cost models could not be determined.
On December 19, 2023, the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled unanimously for Tyler Technologies, Inc. and Jackson County in a homeowners’ class action over the 2023 reassessment. The Jackson County Legislature withheld about $6 million from Tyler Technologies, Inc. under Resolution 21358 of August 7, 2023. The Missouri State Tax Commission ordered the 2023 assessments rolled back in August 2024. In August 2025, Circuit Judge Jacqueline Cook ordered the county to subpoena Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s insurance policy.
Anoka County, Minnesota, sued Tyler Technologies, Inc. for breach of contract in July 2020. Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, paid Tyler Technologies, Inc. $5.1 million and was denied a one-year delay of its reassessment by Judge James Gibbons on November 14, 2025, after admitting notice failures. No court has entered a judgment against Tyler Technologies, Inc. over a reassessment.
On October 7, 2025, Sussex County Finance Director Gina Jennings told the Joint Special Committee that Sussex County’s reassessment of 203,000 parcels cost $10 million, $9 million of it to Tyler Technologies, Inc.; that Sussex worked the data as Tyler Technologies, Inc. delivered it; and that she reached out to New Castle County and did not receive a response. Sussex County has quotes of $15 million for its next reassessment at $65 a parcel.
International Association of Assessing Officers Assessment Advisor Justin Eimers testified October 7, 2025, that Delaware should codify the Association’s standards, that other states may require reappraisal, equalization or removal of the assessor when standards are not met, and that an independent entity should complete a sales ratio study.
New Castle County Council voted seven to six on August 26, 2025, against a resolution asking the County Auditor to examine the reassessment methodology.
New Castle County went live on Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s Enterprise Assessment, the renamed iasWorld, for Tax Year 2025. Tyler Technologies, Inc. signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Amazon Web Services in 2019 and an expanded eight-year agreement on February 5, 2024.
The Amazon fulfillment center at the former Boxwood plant sold for $392 million, was assessed at $108 million in the 2024 reassessment, and was raised by more than $260 million to more than $372 million in July 2026.
County Executive Marcus Henry recommended on September 30, 2025, that the State procure a single assessment vendor for all three counties, and announced on October 22, 2026, that the County will hire a national expert to write the next Request for Proposals for a July 1, 2028, base date.
Senate Bill 228, 85 Del. Laws ch. 237, expires March 31, 2027, and provides in Section 8345(h) that it creates no private cause of action to require a quality control review of any parcel.
Questions Residents Are Asking
Why did the value notices come after the November 2024 election?
Because the schedule said so, and the schedule was set on March 31, 2022, when Tyler Technologies, Inc. notified the County under Section C(2.2) that it had inspected 12.5 percent of parcels against a 50 percent requirement and was moving the project to a July 1, 2024, value date. The contract gave Tyler Technologies, Inc. that choice in its sole discretion. County Executive Marcus Henry confirmed the shift to the General Assembly on September 30, 2025.
Did the County ever have better terms?
Yes, in its own Request for Proposals. Section 8 held 20 percent of every bill until the contract was satisfactorily complete and another 40 percent if the vendor fell behind. Section 4.21 said values would not be accepted until they satisfied the International Association of Assessing Officers’ ratio standard. The contract Council approved on July 13, 2021, contained none of those terms.
Could the County have refused the two-year delay?
Not under Section C(2.2). The County’s consent was required only if the vendor wanted more time for a reason other than its own failure to meet the 50 percent threshold.
Why has New Castle County not sued Tyler Technologies, Inc.?
The contract caps Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s liability at its $11,152,888 fee and, in Section G(5), excludes claims related to valuation of property. The Supreme Court of Missouri held in December 2023 that residents must exhaust the appeal boards before suing over a reassessment, and the contract puts the duty to assess on the County. No court has entered a judgment against Tyler Technologies, Inc. over a reassessment anywhere.
Did the contract require accurate values?
It committed Tyler Technologies, Inc. to International Association of Assessing Officers ratio standards with numbers written in, tested before public disclosure. The only stated consequence for failing them was a written report to the County. Tyler Technologies, Inc.’s own report shows the main Wilmington residential model at 22.68 against a ceiling of 15.
Did Kent and Sussex have the same problems?
No. Same vendor, same software, same exterior inspections. Sussex County paid $10 million for 203,000 parcels, worked the data as it arrived, shared municipal permits from every town, held town halls and advertised twice for appeals. Sussex County’s Finance Director reached out to New Castle County and received no response.
Is the County going to hire Tyler Technologies, Inc. again?
The County has not said. It has announced a national expert to write the next Request for Proposals for a July 1, 2028, base date, and County Executive Marcus Henry has recommended that the State procure one vendor for all three counties. Tyler Technologies, Inc. holds every parcel record in all three counties and was the low bidder in both Kent and Sussex in 2021.
What can I do?
File a correction request for any factual error at any time through the Assessment Office at 302-395-5520 or online. Appeal to the Board of Assessment Review when the window opens January 1, 2027. Read Sections C(2.2) and G(5) of the agreement under Resolution 21-110 on the County website, and ask your Council member whether they will be in the next contract.
Author’s Disclosure
Karen Hartley-Nagle served as President of New Castle County Council from November 2016 to November 2024, and as an appointee to the New Castle County Board of Adjustment from 2012 to 2016. She presided over the July 13, 2021, meeting at which Resolution 21-110 and Ordinance 21-078 were adopted and is recorded as voting yes on both. Her account of the camera failure and the calling of that vote is firsthand. She was a candidate for New Castle County Executive in 2024. Firsthand knowledge of Council procedure, her review of the agreement and questions to the finance director before the vote, a 2021 Delaware Association of Counties meeting, the Office of Finance, and constituent contact with the Tyler Technologies, Inc. field office in 2021 and 2022 is used in this brief where stated. All other figures are drawn from the public record cited in the Evidence File.
The Evidence File: Receipts, Sources, and Primary Documents
Compiled October 28, 2026. Links verified October 28, 2026. 45 documents. APA seventh edition; Bluebook for legislative materials.
Part I. Documents the State and County Have Not Published
NP-01. The written report, required by the Appraisal Services Statement of Work before public disclosure, explaining any ratio study result outside the International Association of Assessing Officers’ standards, for the City of Wilmington residential model.
NP-02. Any record of liquidated damages assessed, or retainage withheld, under Exhibit B of the Tyler Technologies, Inc. agreement.
NP-03. Any sales ratio study, coefficient of dispersion, or price-related differential for the 2024 New Castle County reassessment roll prepared by or for the County.
NP-04. The fee paid to Cushman & Wakefield Regional, LLC, and the fee to be paid to the national third-party expert announced October 22, 2026.
NP-05. The report of the New Castle County Auditor on the reassessment process, referenced by the County in August 2025.
Part II. The Record
I. County Documents and Filings
S-001. New Castle County. (2025). Final report of New Castle County regarding reassessment for the quarter ending March 31, 2025 (C.A. No. 2018-0029-JTL).
S-002. New Castle County. (2026, October 22). New Castle County advances assessment improvements following independent assessment review [Press release].
S-003. New Castle County Council. (2021, June 8). Resolution No. 21-110: Authorizing the execution of a Software as a Service and Professional Services Agreement with Tyler Technologies, Inc., with agreement attached. Section C(2.2); Section C(4.3); Section F(1); Section G(4.1); Section G(5); Section G(6); Exhibit A; Exhibit B, Sections 2.3(a) and 2.3(b); Exhibit D, Schedule 1, Appraisal Services Statement of Work, Model Quality Assurance.
S-004. New Castle County. (2021, January 28). Bid 21PP-001, Real Property Reassessment Project: Request for Proposals, Attachments A through E, and Addendum 1. Closed March 10, 2021.
S-005. New Castle County. (2021, January 28). Request for Proposals, Bid 21PP-001, Real Property Reassessment Project: Section 4.20, Section 4.21, Section 8, Appendix G.
S-006. New Castle County. (2021, January 28). Bid 21PP-001, Attachment D, Cloud Services Agreement. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/41348
S-007. New Castle County. (2021, February 10). NCC Bid 21PP-001 Real Property Reassessment pre-proposal meeting [Video]. Posted February 23, 2021.
S-008. New Castle County Council. (2021, July 13). Regular meeting agenda, Revised Agenda II, posted July 8, 2021: R21-110 and Ordinance 21-078, status tabled; meeting held by video conference and in Council Chambers.
S-009. New Castle County Council. (2021, July 13). Administrative-Finance Committee Revised Agenda II, posted July 9, 2021: R21-110 and Ordinance 21-078, status tabled.
S-010. New Castle County Council. (2021, July 13). Administrative-Finance Committee meeting [Video]. https://nccde.new.swagit.com/videos/128970
S-011. New Castle County Council. (2021, July 13). Regular meeting [Video]. Item H, Consideration of Resolutions, from 0:12:06; R21-110 at approximately 1:29:00. https://nccde.new.swagit.com/videos/128971
S-012. New Castle County Council. (2021, June 8). Administrative-Finance Committee revised agenda, adding R21-110.
S-013. New Castle County Council. (2021, June 22). Regular meeting agenda: Ordinance 21-078, status to be tabled.
S-014. Tyler Technologies, Inc. (2023, December 12). New Castle County reassessment 2025: Presentation update to County Council.
S-015. New Castle County Council. (2021, July 13). Regular meeting minutes: R21-110 lifted from the table and adopted, 13 yes, 0 no; Ordinance 21-078 lifted from the table and adopted, 13 yes, 0 no.
S-016. New Castle County Council. (2021, July 13). Administrative-Finance Committee minutes: R21-110 and Ordinance 21-078.
S-017. New Castle County Council. (2021). Ordinance No. 21-078: Appropriate $8,000,000 from the Reassessment Reserve Account to the Reassessment 2024 capital project.
S-018. New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry. (2025, September 30). Opening remarks to the Joint Special Committee on Property Reassessment [Prepared remarks].
S-019. Wilson, J. (2022, March 31). Reassessment schedule [Letter to N. J. Brannick, Finance Legal Officer, New Castle County Office of Law]. Tyler Technologies, Inc. Published by New Castle County.
II. Vendor and Independent Reports
S-020. Cushman & Wakefield Regional, LLC. (2026, October 2). Non-residential assessment system review and best practices: New Castle County, Delaware. Published by New Castle County, October 22, 2026.
S-021. International Association of Assessing Officers. Standard on contracting for assessment services.
S-022. International Association of Assessing Officers. (2013). Standard on ratio studies.
S-023. Tyler Technologies, Inc. (2025). New Castle County, DE mass appraisal of real property, 2025 reassessment. Published by New Castle County.
S-024. Tyler Technologies, Inc. (2024, February 5). Tyler Technologies announces expanded strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to accelerate public sector transition to the cloud [Press release].
S-025. Tyler Technologies, Inc. (2025, June 24). Tyler Technologies supports Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security’s transition to NERIS for federal compliance [Press release].
III. Legislation, Session Laws and Legislative Records
S-026. Delaware General Assembly, Joint Special Committee on Property Reassessment. (2025, October 7). Minutes: Kent County, Sussex County, and International Association of Assessing Officers presentations.
S-027. Delaware House Democrats. (2025, October 7). Legislators review reassessment process in Kent, Sussex Counties, discuss best practices in county-wide reassessments [Press release].
S-028. S.S. 1 for S.B. 228, 153rd Gen. Assemb. (Del. 2026), 85 Del. Laws ch. 237, enacted without signature Feb. 11, 2026, codified at 9 Del. C. § 8345 and 14 Del. C. § 1916.
S-029. S.B. 228, 153rd Gen. Assemb., Bill Detail and sponsors (Del. 2026).
S-030. S.S. 1 for S.B. 230, 153rd Gen. Assemb. (Del. 2026), signed Mar. 12, 2026, 85 Del. Laws ch. 239.
S-031. H.B. 460, 153rd Gen. Assemb. (Del. 2026), signed July 23, 2026.
IV. Courts and State Agencies, Other Jurisdictions
S-032. Missouri Attorney General. (2024, August 7). State Tax Commission issues order rolling back unlawful property tax assessments after obtaining information from Attorney General Bailey’s lawsuit [Press release].
S-033. State ex rel. Tyler Technologies, Inc. v. Chamberlain, No. SC100298 (Mo. Dec. 19, 2023).
V. News Reporting
S-034. Delaware Public Media. (2025, August 27). New Castle County Council fails to approve audit resolution as County Auditor reviews reassessment process.
S-035. Delaware Public Media. (2025, October 8). Special committee in Dover asks why reassessment process went smoother in southern counties.
S-036. KCTV5. (2025, August 6). Judge orders Jackson County to subpoena contractor who helped with 2023 property assessments.
S-037. KSHB. (2023, August 7). Jackson County Legislature approves resolution to withhold payment to Tyler Technologies until bill passes vote.
S-038. KSHB. (2023, July 19). Jackson County withholding $6M from Tyler Technologies pending improvements in assessment process.
S-039. KSHB. (2023, December 19). Missouri Supreme Court sides with Jackson County, Tyler Technologies in property assessment lawsuits.
S-040. North Metro TV. (2020, July 17). Anoka County sues tech company.
S-041. WHYY. (2025, September 30). Legislative committee hearing on Delaware property reassessments probes lack of data sharing and delay in release of tax notices.
S-042. WVIA. (2025, November 14). Judge quickly denies Lackawanna County request to delay implementation of reassessed property values.
VI. The Truthline Network
S-043. Hartley-Nagle, K. (2026, October 23). The report came late. Your tax bill is still coming. The Truthline Network.
S-044. Hartley-Nagle, K. (2026). The New Castle County Tax Reckoning. The Truthline Network.
S-045. Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025). Tyler Technologies and the AWS partnership. The Truthline Network.
Attribution
This brief is published by The Truthline Network, karenhartleynagle.com. Karen Hartley-Nagle, Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief.
Cite as: Hartley-Nagle, K. (2026, October 28). The contract was written to pay the vendor. It did. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/post/the-contract-was-written-to-pay-the-vendor-it-did
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