Thumbnail photo: Del Norte Unified School are selling 10 surplus vehicles next week. The sale will start 7 a.m. Monday and last through 4 p.m. Friday. | Photo courtesy of Michael Hawkins
Though he initially balked at the plan, Michael Greer eventually came around to approving a resolution authorizing the sale of 10 surplus Del Norte Unified School District vehicles.
Greer said he worried that DNUSD wasn’t adequately getting the word out that it’s selling these vehicles and was giving its employees more of an advantage as a result. However, according to DNUSD Transportation Director Jenna Lussier, because the vehicles are worth less than $2,500 each, the process for providing public notice is more relaxed than if they were more than $2,500.
Plus, Board President Charlaine Mazzei and Trustee Area 2 representative Abbie Crist argued, the public discussion they were having about the vehicles counted giving public notice.
“We’re not just giving them to people who work here,” Crist said. “Somebody could walk in and go over and say I’ll take the Red Betty and they can buy it. If the Ed Code (says) it’s legal for us to do it this way I have no problem announcing it at a public meeting. You don’t have to work here to buy it.”
According to Lussier, Red Betty is a 2012 Jeep Patriot that she used to drive when she worked at the Del Norte County Office of Education’s Community School.
“I think the guys can get enough gas in her to get it to somebody’s house,” Lussier said.
According to DNUSD Superintendent Jeff Harris, Red Betty used to be former nutrition services director Deborah Kravitz’s car.
Lussier said she would put the vehicles up for sale starting at 7 a.m. Monday. Harris recommended the sale close at 4 p.m. Friday.
The oldest of the surplus vehicles is a 1998 Chevrolet box van with 129,000 miles on it. The vehicle with the most miles is a 2008 Chevrolet Express with 212,919 miles.
Their condition ranges from mechanically deficient or non operative to fair, according to Lussier’s staff report. However, Harris said he doubted that some of the vehicles, a 2017 Ford Escape, for example, were still in fair condition.
“We had one of them that would randomly just stop when it idled,” he said. “And we had another one that had a bunch of random knocks when you were going down the road and would jolt when you went into reverse.”
According to Lussier, surplus vehicles that are worth more than $2,500 are required to be advertised for sale in the newspaper for 10 days. The sale is conducted through a closed-bid auction on items being sold for more than $2,500.
Greer said he felt it was a poor look to offer surplus items for sale without advertising it in the newspaper, regardless of what the items were being sold for.
Still, Harris said the last time DNUSD sold surplus items administrators had a similar conversation.
“Even when we pushed it out at that point we had no takers,” he said. “And because we spent time waiting and seeing, it took us almost six months to get rid of the vehicles and they sat over there forever.”
The School Board could also hold direct employee sales for one day and then open it up to the public, Harris said.
Crist said she and her colleagues would be favoring employees if they did that.
According to Lussier, one employee who had expressed interest in a vehicle was in such desperate need that she was sure they wouldn’t be re-selling them.
“The people I have had come and talk to me will be using them for their own personal use, which did make me feel better,” she said.
Mazzei agreed.
“If we have school employees who are in such need of vehicles they are OK with getting these, I don’t know that we need to do more than what we’re doing here,” she said. “This is the public announcement that we have surplus vehicles available.”
