LaGRANGE – The annual sale of surplus property from the county as well as the school board is scheduled for this weekend, and while this year’s list is fairly long, next year’s list may be far shorter due to a proposed change in what the county does with surplus in the future.

In recent years, Troup County has shifted to selling some surplus items like retired fire trucks online on a website known as GovDeals. The website has allowed the county to earn more on some surplus vehicles than local options might have been expected to, but until Thursday, the county had only considered the website’s use for vehicle sales, but that could change for future surplus.

“It looks like it would take more time and effort to take them to the Board of Education to sell then it would be to just take pictures and put them on GovDeals and not have to move them,” said Commissioner Ellis Cadenhead. “… I’m just looking at the risks with the cameras, projector bags in all to grab the bag and take a picture of them because that seems to do very, very well on GovDeals, at least the history that I’ve had with GovDeals. … I think it would bring a lot more money.”

Commissioner Lewis Davis also expressed hopes that the county would be able to get more money for surplus equipment through the website than the county has brought in from auctions in the past, but because the auction is only a little over a week away, the county will most likely continue with this year’s auction like normal.

“I think a good plan might be to continue on as we are this time, but we’ll look at adding a few more vehicles (to GovDeals),” said County Manger Tod Tentler. “Going forward maybe we should just sell (surplus) as we go and not have to store it anywhere. That saves us storage space as well.”

The county has teamed up with the school system for the auction for years at a central event due to the increased crowd that the joint event draws out.

“The reason that we went with the school system on this is because at one time the county was doing theirs and the school board was doing theirs, so we decided to go together and have more stuff to sell and get more folks out to the auction,” said Commissioner Richard English, though at that time selling surplus government property online was not a viable option.

Some concern was expressed about community response to the county moving to online sales of surplus over an annual auction during the meeting.

The auction is scheduled for Saturday, April 22 at the Troup County School Board building on North Davis Road. Government surplus can be found online at www.govdeals.com