Lititz Borough Council gets its first public look at a draft 2027 budget tonight, and this year’s version comes with a wrinkle every taxpayer in town should know about: the countywide property reassessment takes effect for borough taxes on Jan. 1.
The budget workshop starts at 5:30 p.m. in council chambers and on Zoom. According to the agenda, the finance sub-committee, led by council member Carpenter, will present the draft, and council will also vote to advertise the borough’s 2027 meeting calendar. Residents can comment on agenda items for up to three minutes each after giving their name and address.
Why the tax rate will look different
For 2026 the borough kept its real estate tax at 3.25 mills, the same rate as the year before. That number is about to change on paper no matter what council decides, because it was set against assessments that date to 2018.
Lancaster County’s reassessment guidance spells out how this works. Every property has a new value, based on 2022 to 2024 sales, that takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, for county and municipal taxes and July 1, 2027, for school taxes. State law then requires every taxing body, the borough included, to reset its millage so the reassessment alone does not bring in more property tax revenue than before. After that, a board can raise the rate if it needs more money, just as it could in any other year.
The county says county and municipal millage for 2027 will be set toward the end of December, which lines up with Lititz’s usual budget calendar. The Warwick School District sets its 2027-28 rate in June. The new values do not touch the current 2026-27 school tax bills.
What that means for any one house depends on how its value moved compared with the rest of the borough. The county’s own example from the last reassessment: the county rate dropped from 3.735 mills to 2.911 mills when the 2018 values took effect. Owners whose values rose faster than average can still see a bigger bill, and others can see a smaller one. The county says there is no simple way to predict an individual tax change until all three rates are set.
What last year’s budget looked like
A year ago, the draft 2026 budget held the rate at 3.25 mills and flagged the coming reassessment, according to minutes of the Nov. 12, 2025, workshop. The final version, approved Dec. 23, put general fund spending at $9.5 million against $8.8 million in revenue, closing the gap with a $3.3 million balance carried over from 2025, LNP reported. It added $1 per resident on top of the borough’s $6-per-capita library contribution for the Lititz Public Library’s capital campaign and set aside $75,123 for a school resource officer shared with the Warwick School District.
Tonight’s numbers are a draft. Council will need to vote to advertise a proposed budget before it can adopt one in December, and that is when the 2027 millage will be on the table.
Reassessment notices went out June 15. The appeal deadline for the reassessment passed on Aug. 3, and hearings ran from July through October at the Lancaster County Firemen’s Association on East Oregon Road in Lititz. Anyone who wants to check a value can still look it up on the county’s reassessment property search.