Discrepancies Found in Township Property Records

According to Delaware County, Radnor Township owns the Radnor Middle School property, but there’s no record of the township owning Cowan Park.

These are just a few items found by consultants hired by the township to list all of the real estate that Radnor owns and the value of it. “Records are so bad at the county level,” said Greg Fischer, Vice President of Corporate Services for Cresa, an international corporate real estate firm.

Fischer and his fellow consultants said they have come across instances where deeds recording and not reflected on county online systems. They have also found instances where there are deeds that there are no records of being filed in Delaware County.

“What we’re going through is going to pay a huge dividend…to actually know what we own,” said Bob Zienkowski, manager of Radnor Township. “This is demonstrating the real need that needs to be done.”

One of the issues with county records, according to the consultants, is that the records lists a street and size of parcel, but not where the property is located within other parcels. For example, Delaware County records state Radnor Township owns the Radnor Middle School property (It owns a small sliver of parking).

Some other issues that have been found:

• Delaware County records have none showing that Radnor owns Cowan Park.

• According to county records, the township does not own the tennis courts on Windermere Avenue (which the township believes it does).

• When a new piece of land is sold off, the county should issue a new folio number, but that’s not a practice in Delaware County, Fischer said.

• The acreage of the Chew and Young tracts, which the township owns, differ between the deeds and county records.