Candidate Name: Eugenia Thornton

Party: Republican

Age: 72

Hometown: Frederica

 Political experience: 1) As Kent County Planning Commissioner for 13 years, I supported an ordinance to increase First Responder access in housing developments.  I raised awareness about how riparian buffers impact water quality, and consistently voted for tree and wetlands mitigations.  2) As a soldier working at U.S. Cabinet and Department levels, I crafted correspondence for the President and drafted two U.S. Laws.  3) As President of a Veterans organization, I advocated multiple bills regarding tax reductions and benefits for Delaware veterans.  Currently, I am an activist in restoring the Delaware Veterans Home to its pre-Pandemic excellence.

Professional experience: I rose to the rank of Colonel, holding many notable leadership positions:  Battalion Command; Chief of Corps Personnel Operations for half the warfighters deployed to the first Gulf War; Personnel Director for one of the ten major commands in the Army; Architect of the Army's drawdown program after the fall of the Soviet Union; and DoD Spokesperson for multiple historical events.

What uniquely qualifies you for this office?

I honed the skill set for the Deeds office during my 27-year Army career: leading staff; working with complex databases and thousands of paper records; being accountable for public records, people, and money.  Evenings and weekends while on active duty, I earned a Master's degree in Public Administration with a concentration in Organizational Effectiveness.  The Army sent me to American University to be certified in Public Records Keeping in 1977.  I am also a graduate of the Defense Information School, the Army Advanced Public Affairs Course, and an honor graduate of the Army College of Command and Staff.  I am familiar with land use, planning, and zoning from serving on the Planning Commission and creating records for the Deed office.  I've served five years on the Delaware Archives Board, where the Deed records are retired.  

What are the top three issues for this office in your view?

1) Work with county I.T. professionals to put a "do not crawl" code on the county webpage to prevent search engine bots from displaying property data on social media platforms.  Update the Valid Security Certificate for P.R.I.D.E (property information).  2) Educate seniors on having a free and clear title before they discover liens that will make the sale of a home they have owned for almost a lifetime difficult.  3) Work with H.O.A.s to get their documents up to date and filed on the County database.   Work with stakeholders and the Levy Court to eliminate filing fees for H.O.A.s, as was done in New Castle County.

What would be your top priority if elected?

Eliminate the current backlog of paperwork in the Deeds office. 

Relating to the Recorder of Deeds Office - if you could change one policy or law, what would it be?

When the Deeds office recently updated its software, it made it less user-friendly for stakeholders, especially realtors' credit card entries.  The county also failed to add protections against title theft.  In most of America, features to alert taxpayers when recorded documents are changed are considered among Best Practices for Recorder of Deeds software.