MLIRD rejects bid on mobile home

MOSES LAKE - The Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District's mobile home will be put back up for bid after board directors rejected a $53,000 offer on the unit during their last meeting.

Directors initially approved the sale of the mobile home intended for Connelly Park during their February meeting. They set the minimum bid price at $65,000.

The mobile home was purchased around April 2012 for $79,000 and was intended to be a living space for a full-time employee at the park, according to a previous Columbia Basin Herald article. The unit currently sits in Hermiston, Ore., according to directors.

Director Mick Hansen made a motion to reject the bid because the offer did not meet the $65,000 floor price. The bid, which came from a Moses Lake resident, was the only offer MLIRD received.

Hansen said there may be bidders who could offer more than $53,000, but didn't submit a bid because they weren't willing to meet the original floor price.

"I think that to accept something that's lower than the 65 (thousand dollars) at this point is not in the best interest of this board, or the taxpayers," he said.

MLIRD General Manager Curt Carpenter told directors to consider that it would cost the district money to go through the bid process again and the district will have to start paying storage fees on the mobile home.

"We're not paying storage right now, but we will be," he said.

Carpenter said the district could end up paying about $1,800 a month to store the mobile home.

Before directors voted to reject the offer, Director Ron Covey said he thought the board should consider accepting the $53,000.

"To think about having to incur about $1,800 dollars a month in storage fees, it's not going to take long before that bid starts to look pretty good," he said. "I'm not sure if we perhaps shouldn't take it."

Covey said the board knew they were going to lose money on the unit from the time they decided to sell it.

"It was a foolish move to even purchase it when we did, so now we have to deal with it," he said.

The district's legal counsel, Brian Iller, told directors the best thing to do was set a new minimum bid price and re-advertise the unit.

Hansen, Covey and board chair Ken Kernan all voted in favor of directing staff to put the unit out for bid again, this time with a floor price of $53,000.

Kernan said a recent state audit of the district pointed out a problem with how the unit was purchased last year.

"We got the report back and the bottom line is the only thing they could tell us was you bid on a trailer last year but you did it in the wrong fashion," he said.

Kernan said the report noted how the district went out and got three bids for a mobile home when they should have put the purchase through a bid process.

However, Kernan said the only thing that will happen as a result is that auditors will look a little more closely at how the district goes through bid processes during future audits.