Albany, Dougherty officials turn trash into treasure on govdeals website

ALBANY — There’s that old saying about one man’s junk being another’s treasure …

City of Albany and Dougherty County officials have used that maxim as a business tool over the last several years, turning what was essentially surplus junk into dollars — lots of dollars — through the govdeals.com website.

Since city Senior Buyer Dale Henry discovered the govdeals site in 2006 and successfully pitched the idea to upper management, the city has taken in $2.9 million in sales for materials that had outlived their common usefulness. County officials, meanwhile, have realized a $170,000 govdeals return since 2011.

“Believe me, we get every bit of use out of anything before we put it up for bid on govdeals.com,” city Central Services Director Yvette Fields said. “But when department heads determine that materials can no longer be effectively used, they get word to us that they want to put it up for bid.

“Our materials manager, Mike Elliott, conducts bids, putting a start date and time and an end date and time on the govdeals website. The bidding can get pretty hectic as the end date nears.”

Dougherty County Clerk Jawahn Ware, who also serves as procurement manager, said govdeals gives the county’s procurement specialist a “wonderful tool” that has proved to be “effective and efficient.”

“This process of selling online has been tried and validated,” Ware said. “When you look at the past method for selling off surplus materials, an auction that was held every two years, you see how much more convenient this process is in comparison. When we were doing auctions, there would be a significant stockpile of materials over a two-year period. Then you had to advertise the auction, hire an auctioneer and get all the items ready.

“Using govdeals has certainly given us the opportunity to get more bang for our buck.”

With winning bids coming in from as far away as New Mexico, New York and California, city and county officials put pretty much any kind of materials used in the day-to-day operations of the city and county governments up for bid.

“We’ve sold surplus garbage trucks, office furniture, fencing, lawn mowers, vehicles, TVs from the jail, pretty much anything you can think of,” city Procurement Manager Mike Trotter said. “The process is really pretty simple: We list materials (on the website), put up pictures and list the end date for the bid. It does get competitive at times.

“The person who places the winning bid has five days to pay for his purchase and 10 days to pick it up. Once he gets it out the gate, it’s his. All purchases are as-is, where-is. If someone who has the winning bid fails to pick an item up, they’re restricted from bidding for a certain amount of time.”

City Finance Director Derrick Brown said monies collected from govdeals sales are either returned to one of the city’s enterprise funds if the item sold was purchased through that entity’s budget or returned to the general fund if the item was originally purchased by a department whose budget is financed through the city’s general fund.

“That’s something some of our department heads don’t quite get,” Brown said. “Some of them think that if their department uses an item, funds for sales are supposed to go back into their budgets. But money for surplus items in general fund-budgeted departments goes back into the general fund, not to the department itself.”

While some may grumble about use of funds, there is a pretty much consensus agreement among city and county officials about the utilization of the govdeals website.

“There are no negatives,” Fields said, an endorsement echoed by Trotter and Ware. “And when you compare this process to the auctions we used to have, well, it’s worked out even better than I think any of us ever thought it would.”