If ever you wanted to enter a sparkling clean outhouse in a Cook County forest preserve, here’s your chance.
In fact, you can own it.
As the Forest Preserve District continues its attempts to clean house and put its past behind it, staff members have devised a plan to auction off surplus property using the online service eBay.
First in line: two dozen or so never-used wooden outhouses that were rendered obsolete this year when the district hired outside contractors to provide new “comfort stations.”
Forest preserve commissioners authorized district staffers Thursday to use eBay to try to sell the outhouses along with other property, including old manual water pumps, tractors and other outdated agricultural equipment.
Many of the specifics have yet to be worked out, but General Supt. Steven Bylina said they hope to get some of the items online as soon as possible.
Bylina did not have a targeted amount for how much money the district hopes to raise.
“Obviously it’s more than what it would be if [the property] is just sitting there,” Bylina said.
With the outhouses, for example, Bylina said the district would like to at least recoup the cost of materials used by the staff to build the structures, estimated at roughly $300 each.
As for possible uses, Bylina suggested the outhouses could be used as shanties for ice fishing or shelters for hunters.
A check of eBay Thursday afternoon showed no other outhouses for sale on the Web site.
Also Thursday, commissioners took the first step in issuing up to $100 million in bonded debt for improvements at the district, Brookfield Zoo and the Chicago Botanic Garden.
According to a schedule given to commissioners, final approval is slated for Oct. 6.
Commissioner Forrest Claypool said the district should delay the issue until the proposed 2005 budget is released in November. That way, Claypool said, the board and the public can see the administration’s plans for paying off the debt, which so far have not been articulated.
Claypool said it will be important to know, before the 2005 budget is approved, whether the debt will be paid off through a property tax increase or from budget funds.
District Board President John Stroger called raising property taxes to pay off the debt a “possibility,” but he provided no specifics.
“The trouble is neither we as commissioners nor the public knows how you’re proposing to pay for these bonds,” Claypool said to Stroger during Thursday’s meeting. “And we won’t know that until your operating budget comes out 30 days after we’re being asked to approve” the bond sale.
Also Thursday, the district board rejected a proposal to use Swallow Cliff toboggan slides for a proposed activity called “zorbing,” in which people would roll down the chutes in an inflatable rubber ball.
The proposal was not rejected on the activity’s merits. Rather, Stroger suggested that other potential vendors should get a chance to submit bids because the vendor who raised the idea had gone outside the original guidelines for outsourcing the chutes.
