Springfield Partners With Auction Site GovDeals.com

Are you in the market for a Crown Victoria, a Caterpillar front loader or a desk chair or maybe some used sewer equipment? Well, Springfield has a deal for you.

Earlier this month, Springfield Township became a partner of the online auction website GovDeals. Through the site, municipalities can sell equipment and other materials to web-savvy bargain hunters.

Buyers can search by location or by item. On the site's front page the goods, culled from confiscations and from government surplus, are arranged in several dozen categories. The categories sometimes seem prohibitively general (machinery, heavy) and sometimes humorously specific (batteries, all types). At the time this article was written, the goods getting auctioned on the site ranged from heavy machinery to quixotic ephemera. Bidding was still open on Lost in Space dolls offered by Santa Ana, CA, SCUBA gear from Jessup, MD and a pool slide from Dayton, OH.

Springfield is the latest New Jersey municipality to auction goods on the site—nearby towns already using the site include Maplewood and Glen Ridge. Springfield Township Committee member Marc Krauss spearheaded the township's involvement with the site, which he characterized as a modern makeover of an annual Springfield event.

"Traditionally, the town would hold an auction once a year," Krauss said. "This is 21^st century."

Krauss said the benefit of being involved with GovDeals is not in the money from sales, but in the opportunity to get rid of assets that are no longer valuable to the town but could be of worth elsewhere. He pointed to the former Springfield police cruisers on sale as an example. The cars themselves are used and banged up.  While they would be a good resource for someone needing parts, they are a burden to the town for the space they take up.

"[GovDeals] is a good way to clean house," Krauss said.