It’s a question that keeps coming up around Sussex County: why does Rehoboth Beach operate with a significantly larger budget than the City of Lewes? Officials have put together a detailed comparison to help answer that question.
One of the biggest factors is how each city handles utility services. Rehoboth Beach includes both Water and Wastewater operations as part of its budget — bringing in $8.2 million and $12 million respectively. Those two enterprise funds alone make up roughly 40.3% of the city’s total budget. Lewes, on the other hand, handles utility operations through a separate Board of Public Works, meaning those figures don’t appear in the city’s main budget at all.
When looking at General Fund revenues — the core operating budgets for each city — the gap is still substantial. Rehoboth Beach takes in $29.9 million in General Fund revenue, while Lewes brings in $13.8 million, making Lewes’s General Fund about 46.1% the size of Rehoboth Beach’s.
Interestingly, property taxes play a bigger role in Lewes than in Rehoboth Beach. Lewes collects $3.1 million in property tax revenue, which represents about 22.8% of its total revenues. Rehoboth Beach collects slightly less in property taxes — $2.7 million — but that figure only accounts for about 10.3% of its total revenues. The difference reflects how heavily Rehoboth Beach leans on tourism-driven income to fund city operations.
Parking revenue is one of the clearest illustrations of that tourism impact. Rehoboth Beach budgets $10.6 million from parking, compared to just $1.5 million for Lewes. A similar gap exists with lodging and accommodation taxes — Rehoboth Beach projects $4.9 million from that source, while Lewes budgets $1.2 million, or about 23.9% of what Rehoboth Beach expects to collect.
Capital spending also sets the two cities apart. Rehoboth Beach directs roughly 27.2% of its total budget toward capital improvements and infrastructure, compared to just 9.9% for Lewes. City officials say that higher figure is driven in part by the demands of maintaining utility systems and a broader range of municipal services.
