Commissioners look for ways to fund new Rehoboth city hall

Residents of Rehoboth can rest assured they will not see an increase in taxes, at least for the time being.

During the three and a half hour meeting Friday, Mayor Sam Cooper and city commissioners discussed the new city hall project, which may need an additional $1 million from the city's reserve fund to complete.

Commissioners Stan Mills and Kathy McGuiness each said there have been thoughts of increasing taxes to help pay for capital improvement programs, such as the new city hall.

"At one point we talked about raising the residential rental tax from the existing 3 percent to 6 percent," said Mills.  "And that's temporarily taken off of the table at this point because we wanted to give land lords advanced notice."

"I did like the idea of not having to raise our rental taxes at this point. Also the commercial rental tax which was also discussed, but I do believe we're going to start having budget quarterly meetings and that those things will be on the table. Everything will be," said McGuiness.

Other taxes that were proposed include a business gross receipt tax, tax on commercial rentals and possibly piggy backing on a combinations tax.

But the question on McGuiness' mind was why do the costs continue to rise in the first place.  The panel reviewed approved change order logs.

"The change orders, where were they originated, that kind of information, that was important to me.  Even though that was only $600,000 of it, there's another $400,000 that are pending and I look forward to our next budget meeting which is going to be at our next workshop."

The next budget meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 6 from 6 to 9 a.m.

"After this budget is adopted, we've all agreed to have additional meetings to look again at those items for the capital improvement program that were taken off the table, that don't fit into this year's budgets, and figured out ways to finance those in the future," said Mills.