City Hall East garage sale coming soon

City to hold giant yard sale at City Hall East

Image Back in April, I hinted that the Reed administration was hoping to hold a rummage sale to get rid of the literal tons of old furniture, fixtures and general stuff that had been left behind by various occupants of City Hall East over the decades.

Since then, the city has been working to try to make this happen but, believe it or don’t, legal restrictions that require the sale of city property to be handled through a bidding process have made the whole situation far more complicated than it should’ve been.

First, having divided the various items into wholesale lots, the city asked for bids from potential buyers. Only a handful of salvage companies responded and the highest offers were in the neighborhood of a miserable two bits (25 cents to you young’uns) per chair. So, the city switched gears, exploring the possibility of an auction. But the city’s auction contractor, figuring that the merchandise wasn’t valuable enough to be worth its time, insisted on a buyers premium so high it would’ve discouraged bids.