County auctions off surplus office furniture
Filing cabinets, book shelves increasingly obsolete
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A recent re-organization of municipal departments, combined with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, have produced a large surplus of office furniture and related fixtures at Norfolk County.
A total of 43 lots were recently posted to an auction website that specializes in liquidating surplus property from all levels of government.
This week, Norfolk CAO Jason Burgess cited a recent re-organization – dubbed Project Domus – for streamlining some county functions.
Aside from operational efficiencies, Project Domus emphasizes working from home where possible, something Norfolk and other corporate entities are increasingly factoring into hiring decisions due to professional demand for this option.
As a result, an increasing number of desks, chairs, tables and the like have been rendered redundant and are no longer needed.
The general movement at the corporate level to electronic record-keeping is also rendering some standard office infrastructure obsolete. Also featured in the county auction is a selection of filing cabinets and book shelves.
“We are moving to digitize more of our files in order to reduce the total footprint we take up storing paper,” Burgess says. “We did have an initial budget for this as part of our project to jump-start us on our way but this will likely be a multi-year project.”
Shelley Darlington, Norfolk’s general manager of corporate services, says the number of lots posted at GovDeals is larger than usual because surplus inventory has backed up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest auction – which closes at noon May 7 – features a couple lots not normally associated with municipal offices. One is a vertical weight scale of the kind often seen in medical settings. Another is a medical examination table.
Darlington says this is surplus equipment arising from the closure of the medical centre on St. George Street in Port Dover. Norfolk County declared the building surplus sometime ago and is looking for a buyer.
“County policy requires that all surplus assets are first made available to other county departments,” Darlington said. “If not required by other departments, the surplus asset will be disposed of on the government online site.”
Darlington added Norfolk has the option of donating surplus equipment and furniture to registered non-profits if items have no resale value or no longer meet county safety standards.
For more information, visit www.govdeals.ca and enter “Norfolk County” into the search field.
MSonnenberg@postmedia.com
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