City focused on selling surplus property
Officials have had an eye on issue over past few years
Perhaps because of recent sales of surplus property, some citizens have asked whether the Yuma city government is sitting on a surplus of property.
The Yuma Sun asked Dave Nash, the city’s public affairs coordinator, to explain the issue, including how much property the city owns, what the plans are for it and how it sells property.
He noted the city has focused on surplus property sales in the previous two to three fiscal years. As a result, “there’s not really much left: the southwest corner of 16th Street and 4th Avenue and sections around the intersection of 16th Street and Avenue A come to mind.”
Properties come into city ownership for various reasons, but the majority are usually acquired in order to perform some necessary public infrastructure improvement. A good example, Nash pointed out, is a case that was just on a recent council agenda, a property near 12th Street and the East Main Canal.
City officials ultimately decided it was not in the city’s overall best interest to build a bridge over the canal on 12th Street, which would also have had to be improved between 14th Avenue and 4th Avenue to handle all the extra traffic. So a piece of property that had been acquired for that project was sold, Nash noted.
Properties are typically sold at market value, ei-
ther by bid or through the city’s contracted real estate agent, he said.
“If we’re using the same process by which other real estate is sold, how could it be possible that we could ‘undercut’ other property sales?” Nash rhetorically asked. “But to the extent any property acquired by the city is ever sold for ‘less,’ the most likely explanation is, we had to take part of the originally purchased property and put a piece of infrastructure on it.”
So generally what remains, he added, “is A) a smaller piece of property, and B) a piece of property that has some facility on it, thereby restricting its functionality or access.”
The 16th Street and Avenue A area is an example of “B,” according to Nash. “The land we have on the market there is smaller than the small office and retail space that was at that intersection before, so the range of land uses that would fit there is presumably pretty small,” he explained.
A look at the Yuma County Assessor website, which indicates the city owns 454 pieces of property, might give the appearance that the city owns a lot real estate. “That’s because we own streets, retention basins, parks, rights of way and utility easements. Most if not all of those are not properties we could sell,” Nash said.
A Yuma council member recently questioned the city’s process of selling real estate, asking why the municipality was selling property without putting it up for bid. Then-councilor Gary Wright pointed out that state law requires a bidding process when selling property.
The agenda item in question was an ordinance authorizing the sale of residential property located at 1350 W. 12th St. The ordinance declared the surplus as city-owned property and authorized its sale through the city’s real estate services contract.
Wright said he thought it was “great” that the city was identifying and selling surplus property, but he wondered why it wasn’t being sold through a bidding process.
City Attorney Richard Files replied that municipalities have a little more freedom when it comes to selling real estate.
Files explained that the Arizona Supreme Court recognizes that charter cities are exempt from the statute when disposing of real estate property. However, Files noted that the city still had a “good” competitive process, albeit through the broker, because the property ultimately goes to the party making the highest offer.