Going once, twice, sold!

HARLINGEN — More than 100 bidders from across the Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico are expected to bid on more than 800 items that the city will sell at auction on Saturday.

Among the items are refrigerators from the housing authority, obsolete computer equipment
and surplus supplies from city departments including the city attorney, parks and recreation, WaterWorks, purchasing and public buildings.

Also up for bids are items such as cars, motorcycles, a forklift, front-load tractor and a Ford garbage truck.

The items have been declared surplus for a variety of reasons, city officials said Wednesday.
For example, the city attorney’s office will sell 51 legal-size hanging folders, 12 ballpoint pen refills and 70 100-count boxes of paper clips.

The city attorney’s assistant Francis Peña said those items are unusable, and were ordered in error by one of her predecessors.

“(The paper clips) were the teeny-weeny mini-size,” she said. “… They were the wrong size but they were never returned. (The pen refills were) for specific Parker pens and we don’t have those.”

Peña said the city attorney’s office uses standard-size, not legal-size, hanging folders, so it can’t use the larger file folders.

According to Staples office supply’s online catalog, boxes of 25 legal-size hanging folders cost $17.99 each. Medium-point Parker ballpoint pen refills cost $4.99 each and a box of 1,000 small paper clips cost $5.29.

The Harlingen Housing Authority is selling more than 30 refrigerators because the department received a grant to replace some of the appliances in the public housing units, interim City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez said.

“They’ve replaced them with newer units. Then the old ones got sent to us to auction off,” he said.

The city will also auction 56 vehicles including used fleet vehicles and those confiscated by the police department. Vehicles include a Honda Accord, a Ford expedition, two Honda motorcycles, a forklift, front-load tractor and a Ford garbage truck.

Gonzalez added that the money from each item sold at the auction will be returned to the department from which the items originated.

When the city sells an item for the sanitation department, for example, the money will go back to the city fund for that department, he said. City finance Director Roel Gutierrez said he could not estimate how much money would be raised through the auction due to the erratic nature of bidding. He said, however, last year’s auction raised roughly $68,000, adding that a fire truck sold for $2,000.

Information for auction bidders:
* Items to be sold can be viewed today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the public works warehouse, 404 S. 54th St.
* Registration for bidders starts at 8 a.m. Saturday
Auction starts at 10 a.m. at the public works warehouse, 404 S. 54th St.
* All sales are final.
Payment is required on the day of the auction, with cash or major credit card.
* A 3 percent charge for payment by check unless the buyer provides a bank letter of guarantee.