DeKalb hopes county junk will generate cash

By Megan Matteucci

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Crumpled police cars, tractors missing tires, decade-old garbage trucks and a repainted ambulance fill a lot near I-285 and Memorial Drive.

It’s the “Island of Misfit Toys” for DeKalb County equipment. But officials hope the abandoned vehicles and other paraphernalia will find new homes and generate cash to help the county close an $84 million deficit.

The crashed trucks may only generate a few thousand dollars each, but every little bit helps, DeKalb County Commissioner Larry Johnson said.

“These are vehicles that have been wrecked or have too many miles to be considered safe on the road,” said Johnson, the County Commission’s presiding officer.

The commission recently approved auctioning off 288 vehicles and hundreds of other pieces of equipment deemed surplus.

Some of the items will be available on GovDeals.com, and others will be auctioned locally through Adesa, a Fairburn auto auction.

As of Thursday, no auction dates had been set.

County workers are still in the process of boxing two warehouses full of items, including hundreds of laptop computers, flashing lights removed from patrol cars, a room full of chairs and bags of sand. There are rolls of fire hose and empty oxygen tanks used by firefighters.

Some of the items -- such as a police Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle with 3,000 miles and several lawn mowers -- look new and likely will fetch a good value, Commissioner Jeff Rader said. Those items are only being auctioned because of an inventory reduction, he said.

County spokeswoman Angela Walton said she could not estimate how much money DeKalb will generate, other than saying it hopes to “recoup fair-market value based on the current economic climate.”

Last year, the county made about $393,300 selling vehicles at Adesa. But the inventory sent to the auction was much less than the new items, officials said.

Most of the items are picked up in less than a week, said Terry Bazzoon, a spokesman for GovDeals.com.

“We’re sort of like eBay for governments,” he said.

The Web site charges DeKalb and the 290 other governments that it works with, including the state of Georgia, a 7.5 percent commission, Bazzoon said.

Most of the equipment -- such as bulldozers, dump trucks and asphalt rollers -- will be picked up by other governments.

Fifteen Crown Victorias have had DeKalb police decals and sirens removed, but they appear to be a long way from being able to drive off the lot. But the cars -- many with wrecked front ends, cracked windshields and dangling bumpers -- will attract car dealers, said Nick Pawlak, assistant general manager of Adesa Atlanta.

DeKalb’s offers may seem strange to the average shopper, but Bazzoon says the Web site has successfully sold items as out of the ordinary as horses from the University of Georgia’s veterinarian school and 10,000 tons of coal from Virginia Tech.

In the past 10 years, GovDeals has sold $29.4 million worth of equipment for the state of Georgia and $8.1 million for county governments in Georgia.