Chelan County has a plan in place to auction off pieces of land it owns that have been identified as surplus property. 

 County commissioners signed a resolution Monday authorizing the public auction or transfer of 35 pieces of land. 

 Chelan County Treasurer David Griffiths says the county will need help marketing some of high end parcels in tourist areas. 

 "We'll do the best we can," said Griffiths. "We have some people that have some expertise in advertising these properties in the county. And maybe they can help us with some ads. Certainly those properties in Chelan, I'm talking about Lake Chelan. Those will bring a lot of heightened interest in that sale. So I think we might want to run some kind of cutsie ad in the Seattle newspaper." 

The county plans to hold an online auction for the properties by within the next 90 days. 

Griffiths plans to have the parcels up for auction divided into three categories – tax foreclosure properties, treasurer’s tax title properties and surplus properties. 

Tax payers can signed up and bid for any one of the three if they’ve paid the $500 minimum bid license fee. A person who is not successful with their bid would be refunded for the fee. 

There’ll be a deadline to bid on each property. If the high bidder is not successful in coming up with the money for the purchase, then the property will go up for bid once again the following week. 

Some of the properties that would only serve a purpose to adjacent land owners will not go to auction initially, but instead will be offered to those adjacent property owners specifically for a price determined by the county.  

If the adjacent owner declined to purchase the property, it would then be offered in the online auction. If there were then no offers, the property after a time would be offered for sale at a reduced price. 

Commissioner Kevin Overbay identified each of the 35 properties up for sale before opening up a public hearing on the surplus properties Monday morning. 

The properties combined to total 83.2 acres with an estimated value at $4.75 million. 

Overbay Monday said he’s spent long hours trying to organize the surplus property auction. He offered thanks to the county prosecuting attorney’s office for handling the historical perspective of the land. He also thanked the county assessor’s office for compiling the list of properties. 

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