Woodland moves auctions of surplus items online hoping for more bang

WOODLAND — There’s a lot to admire in The Columbian’s offices.

The walls are filled with beautiful pictures from our staff photographers. Some of our award-winning reporters have trophies at their desks. We even have a newsroom fish.

I wanted to add to that legacy, and I knew just what our office needed.

A broken chain saw.

On Jan. 2, the city of Woodland’s Twitter account sent out a message that the city was auctioning off surplus items. Government agencies and school districts are allowed to declare items surplus and sell or auction them off. As more agencies move these auctions online, they’re seeing more bids and more revenue. It’s also allowed city officials to try to get rid of stuff they probably wouldn’t have tried to auction off previously. Like, a broken chain saw, for example.

“It’s not in very good condition. I wouldn’t bid on it,” cautioned Mari Ripp, Woodland’s clerk-treasurer who was in charge of the city’s recent online auction. “It looked junky to me. People must know how to rebuild those. It’s not new, by any means.”

The chain saw was listed in “poor” condition with this description: “broken, needs crank.” It was perfect. There were no bids, so I promptly bid $1. Within a day, I was outbid, and the price went above the $5 limit I set to try to buy some new office decor. I bid a few more times to raise the price out of spite and anger. The chain saw ended up selling for $51 after 12 total bids.

I next focused my attention on a radar gun. Not wanting to lose out, I threw down big money and bid $5 to start. That was on Jan. 2. The auction ran until Wednesday. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, but I couldn’t help but daydream about all the fun we could have in the office with a radar gun. I had visions of this article running with art of me holding the radar gun in a “Charlie’s Angels” style pose.

Within 12 hours, those dreams were crushed. I was outbid again.

I tried again on a set of two radar guns, and was out-bid within an hour. The radar gun received 17 bids and sold for $102.50, and the set sold for $103.50 after nine bids.

In total, Woodland put 78 items up for bid and brought in $17,379.27. Six items received no bids, and 19 items each had one $1 bid, such as the Kodak DC5000 digital camera I finally won. I was the leading bidder for a set of two Polaroid cameras for nine days, and was outbid with less than five minutes to go in the auction, so I quickly found another item with zero bids and swooped in for the kill.

That’s precisely what Ripp and Woodland officials were hoping would happen when they moved their surplus auctions online this year.

“I don’t think our bidders went as high as when we did silent auctions or live auctions,” Ripp said. “We don’t have as big a turnout. Getting out there and getting it on social media has brought in a bigger audience.”

Previously, Woodland held surplus auctions every two years, Ripp said, adding that the city would get a minimum of $1,500 for vehicles and “was lucky” to get close to $1,000 on smaller office items.

Kirk Johnson, finance director for the city of Ridgefield, has seen an increase in revenue coming from auctions since moving the city online, as well. Previously, the city auctioned off mostly vehicles, and would take them up to Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers in Chehalis. The city would go up about once a year, and bring in usually $5,000 to $10,000, he said.

“We’ve already made $10,000 in a month from the online site,” Johnson said. “We’ve put some things we would’ve demolished, taken to the dump or put for metal recycling up for auction and people have bought them.”

Johnson was shocked at the activity for an office trailer, which received 21 bids and ended up selling to a man near Seattle who converts office trailers into tiny homes.

“Going online is the future,” he said. “Everybody wants to do everything online. This gives us a lot more people’s eyes on things we want to get rid of. Hopefully we can find people who want this stuff, and that means less items are going to the dump. It’s more Earth-friendly, and we can get more of a return on that.”

The money from surplus auctions goes back to the city depending on how the item was purchased. If it was purchased with money from the general fund, the revenue from the sale will go back to the general fund.

Money-saving move

Moving the auction online also helped Woodland save extra money since the city didn’t have to hire staff to work a live or silent auction, or have to pay another company to auction off the items. Woodland used www.publicsurplus.com to sell the items, which works similar to eBay.

The city receives 100 percent of the bid amount, and the bidder has to pay a fee and sales tax, which goes to the website, Ripp said. For example, I won the digital camera for a $1 bid, but ended up paying $2.08 in total. The website charges a 10.50 percent fee of the winning amount to the bidder, or a $1 minimum for smaller items. There was also 8 cents in sales tax on my camera (batteries not included).

Stephen Hagberg out of Tacoma won the radar gun for $102.50, and ended up spending a total of $121.36 after fees, he wrote in an email. Hagberg wrote that he looks at public auction sites daily for auctions ending the same day and bids on items he thinks are interesting. He places bids every other month or so, he wrote.

“In the past, I have successfully picked up surplus public service radios, some gas monitoring equipment, handheld public service radios, a radio repeater and office supplies,” he wrote.

“All of the items, including radios, are then used for personal use, and none of the capabilities for use with public service agencies are retained. In the case of radios, most end up reprogrammed for use in the amateur radio or family-use walkie talkie range.”

Hagberg said the radar gun was a novelty, and he plans on monitoring traffic speeds on his block out of curiosity.

“At no point will it be used for actual confrontation of speeders,” he wrote.

Far-flung buyers

Tacoma isn’t the farthest location some Clark County surplus items have traveled to recently. The Camas School District had “two-thirds a school worth of desks and chairs” that it was having trouble getting rid of, according to Steve Marshall, director of educational resources for the district.

The district couldn’t sell the items, and reached out to a few local churches. Officials from Grace Foursquare Church purchased the items, as they underwrite a school in The Gambia in west Africa.

“Much of the items were overlooked,” he said. “When we had representatives from the churches and schools in Africa, they took nearly everything. That went from a puppet stage to headphones, tape players. School districts and private schools and citizens passed on desks and chairs. These representatives couldn’t get enough desks and chairs. These chairs are indestructible. Maybe the color isn’t as modern, or they don’t stack as well as the new ones. Nobody domestically wanted them. They’re going to be in Africa in use until 2070 now.”

He said that even outdated reference materials were scooped up for the school.

“To them, these are great learning resources even though they might be outdated,” he said. “The North Pole and the South Pole and the continents aren’t going to change.”

Marshall said the school district surpluses items continually, and holds a public sale every other year or as needed. The district’s most recent public sale, held this past summer, brought in about $3,000, he said.

He was a little disappointed in what the public purchased at the sale, or didn’t purchase.

“People like book cases. Sadly, books were not as popular. It made me a little sad,” he said. “A lot of the books I knew from my childhood, essentially, they have no value. These are Newbery Award-winners and ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ We partnered with the Camas Public Library, preschool program, before- and after-school programs, and they built up their libraries with those books. No families were coming in to create an at-home library.”