City plans to sell surplus stuff

If you’ve ever wanted 14 boxes of miscellaneous cords or a broken Savin 3250 duplicator, then get ready for the city’s big surplus stuff sale.

The date has yet to be determined, however, and officials aren’t yet sure just how they’re doing to peddle the piles of used equipment.

But no matter how it goes the sale is bound to be a bargain hunters paradise, at least for those who aren’t too picky about what they buy.

City Purchasing Agent Roger Rousseau, who got stuck with the job of rounding up all the city’s unused equipment, said he’s eyeing the possibility of a live or online auction to sell off everything he’s squirreling away in an old schoolhouse on Chippens Hill.

Officials hope they can follow the lead of many families who are facing a shortage of cash and try to earn some greenbacks by dumping items the city doesn’t need anymore.

Some of it even sounds like it might be pretty good.

The police department, for instance, found a couple of motorcycles it doesn’t use anymore – a 1990 Harley Davidson and a 1998 Honda. There’s no word on their condition, however.

The Board of Education poked around and found, among other pieces, a French fry fryer, a bench-type jigsaw and a commercial refrigerator of uncertain vintage.

The library offered up 53 toddler chairs, 70 feet of industrial shelving, 10 fire extinguishers and more.

The city accumulated all sorts of unneeded computer monitors, servers, printers and other computer-related equipment.

The treasurer’s office tossed a coat rack and four check file cabinets into the for sale pile.

It doesn’t appear the mayor’s office found anything extra to sell, but perhaps Mayor Art Ward still needs to poke around in some of the darker corners to see what might be hanging around from days past.

The effort to sell off surplus stuff started last fall when freshman city Councilor David Mills said it might make sense to put it all on sale on eBay.

Rousseau said there may be some legal complications with selling it on eBay – contractual terms there apparently don’t pass muster with city lawyers – but other options exist.

He said he’s still trying to accumulate as much as possible to sell before figuring out exactly how to get rid of it all.

One complication, Rousseau said, is that it’s hard to set values for some equipment that’s quite old. But, he said, there are experts out there who can do it.

The Board of Finance’s purchasing committee will likely take the lead in figuring out how to proceed.

The city has had a little experience selling surplus material.

After it bought the downtown mall, it hired an auctioneer to sell all sorts of things left behind in there, from shelving to paintings.

About a decade ago, the city sold excess computer equipment at a sale at the Beals Senior-Community Center. At that sale, it simply priced used items and sold them like any tag sale vendor might.

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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com