According to supporting documents provided at the school board meeting, the 34 buses that will be disposed of by the district have not moved since March 2020 due to a shortage of drivers. They comprise a third of the oldest buses that the school district owns, and would be costly to repair.

“Those buses are anywhere from 18 to 22 years old and they have upward of 200-t0-300,000 miles on them so they have served us well and we would like to declare those excess,” said Shane Farnsworth, superintendent of Alpine School District. “They get to a point where the repair costs are just cost prohibited and we need to turn them over to the public for purchase if they wish to.”

According to the supporting documents, the school district has been able to update its bus fleet in recent years. By cycling out these older buses, and no longer having to pay the associated registration and insurance costs, the hope is that the Alpine Transportation Bus Garage will stay on or under budget for the first year ever in district history.

The 14 art pieces approved for disposal were previously stored at the Alpine School District Surplus warehouse, and according to supporting documents provided at the school board meeting, have not seen any interest or movement for years at a time. The art pieces were appraised in December 2021 by representatives from the State of Utah Division of Arts and Museums as well as Sterling Keyes, the director of fine arts at Alpine School District.

“We had partnered with art experts to… review all of the art that we have, making sure that we are not declaring excess any piece of art that has historical value for the area, or has a monetary value because of its worth,” Farnsworth said. “So these are all pieces that were determined not to have significant historical or monetary value and we would like to sell those off in surplus.”

Photos of each art piece can be found online at https://bit.ly/34QsA2s. Members of the public who are interested in purchasing one of the 14 art pieces or 34 surplus buses will be able to bid on them at http://publicsurplus.com..