McKinstry: Yonkers needs more than eBay to clean up its budget

Thursday July 26, 2012 12:45 PM By Gerald McKinstry

Photo credit: Nancy Siesel | Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano introduces members of the newly appointed Yonkers Commission of Inquiry on Finances at a press conference at City Hall. (April 5, 2012)

After a little closet-cleaning, the City of Yonkers pulled in $44,000 by selling no longer wanted items on eBay.

A Lincoln Navigator, traffic signal, 1990 Mack Fire Truck and vintage Schwab Co. Bank Safe were among the items that pulled in a few bucks for the cash-starved city.

Mayor Mike Spano said it was a simple way of turning “excessive spending into significant savings for taxpayers.”

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Simple? Yes. Significant? Ehhhh, not so much.

The city is facing a daunting $428 million budget deficit over 4 years and unless they’ve got a few undiscovered Monets hanging in City Hall, visits to the cyber-auction house are more about symbolism. Yonkers has a long way to go to plug that hole.

Spano knows this and that’s why he’s again highlighted the numbers this week – he’s hoping for some union concessions to address its structural deficit. The city simply spends more than it brings in.

Selling surplus on eBay is a decent way to shed old equipment. It’s done by New York State and Westchester County, where coincidently Larry Schwartz (now secretary to the governor) started the program in 2008 when he was Westchester’s deputy county executive. That year the county pulled in roughly $282,000 on its excess junk while the state cashed-in a cool $1.3 million soon after in started the program in 2010.

In Yonkers, its new eBay store YonkersCARStore.com, has already sold 10 vehicles, cameras and other surplus including some of those 40 take home cars that the mayor recalled after taking office.

Hundreds more items will be up for auction in the coming months, but unfortunately they will do little to clean the real budget mess.

Pictured above: Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano introduces members of the newly appointed Yonkers Commission of Inquiry on Finances at a press conference at City Hall. (April 5, 2012)

Tags: yonkers , deficit , auction , ebay , mike spano