County auctions off property

Businessman Jason Kazmark saw opportunity where Deborah Firkins saw a money pit.

Kazmark bought a run-down little house at 4917 N. Napa St. at a Spokane County surplus property auction Friday for the minimum price of $29,100. He plans to renovate it as an investment.

Firkins was delighted. As the county public works engineer responsible for maintaining the house, she had come to hate it.

“It needs a lot of work,” Kazmark acknowledged. “I’m willing to take on the headache.”

He said he and his wife, Kimberly, who operate two day care centers, have budgeted $22,000 to rehabilitate the house.

First, though, they’ll have to battle the city of Spokane over a $19,900 balance for cleanup work. The purchase price included a $10,860 city lien, but city officials say they spent $30,760 to remove piles of garbage from inside and outside the house.

County officials believe the city has no valid lien for nearly two-thirds of what it claims. Efforts to reach a city official willing to discuss the issue were unsuccessful.

“I’m going to try to settle it out of court with the city,” Kazmark said.

Regardless, he expects to make money on the deal. Kazmark said he’s been watching the property since last year, when the county’s minimum price – the assessed value – was $51,800. The assessment was reduced when Firkins persuaded an appraiser to take a closer look. Kazmark said he and his wife are confident the value will go back up when the house is renovated.

They weren’t the only ones hoping to make money from their purchase at Friday’s auction.

Jason Weekley bought the mineral rights to three industrial properties for $600 and hopes to mine a profit from the businesses that own the surface land.

“Basically, yes,” Weekley conceded when asked whether he hopes to hold the landowners hostage. He declined to elaborate.

Firkins said the businesses that own the land – Pupo Family Limited Partnership, of Spokane, Ryerson & Son, of Chicago, and Willamette Industries, of Federal Way, Wash. – failed to respond when she gave them first chance to buy the mineral rights.

True to her word, Deer Park resident Diane Lyons didn’t attend Friday’s auction even though a 10-by-50-foot strip of her backyard was on the block. No one else could do anything with the land, Lyons said in an interview, but next-door neighbor Gary Whitney wasn’t so sure.Fearing a stranger would buy the land and park an old school bus on the other side of his fence, Whitney bid the $300 parcel up to $500 to drive off an unidentified man who wanted the 10-foot-wide ribbon of land.

After three rounds of $10 raises, Whitney increased the stakes. His opponent answered a $50 raise and added $20, but folded when Whitney threw down a $70 challenge.

The two men chatted briefly as they left the auction.

“This gentleman who bid against me said he just wanted to own some land in Deer Park,” Whitney said. “That’s kind of scary. Who knows what his intentions were?”

Now nothing will change, Whitney said. “We will still mow our own lawns.”

Firkins called auction day a good day. She and her auctioneer, county Treasurer Skip Chilberg, unloaded eight of 30 largely useless parcels and put $45,990 worth of real estate back on the tax rolls.

Many of the offerings were forgotten scraps of land – accidents of history or quirks of a state law that allow people to get separate tax parcels for their fence lines or, if they please, their doghouses.

The unsold parcels may now be purchased for the minimum price until Firkins schedules another auction next year.

For more information, call Firkins at (509) 477-5669 or click on the “Surplus Properties” link on the county Web site, www.spokanecounty.org.