PRIORITIES AND PROPERTY 245 



to abandon improvements in lieu of restoration where no substantial excess 

 value remained. In cases where the situation warranted, an expert appraiser 

 employed by OSRD visited the premises and made appropriate recommen- 

 dations. 



Whenever the contractor elected to have the premises restored to substan- 

 tially their original condition, he was authorized to proceed immediately 

 with the restoration and to charge the net cost to the contract. 



Disposition of Surplus Property 



The Surplus Property Act of 1944 and the various regulations issued 

 thereunder established a procedure for disposing of surplus property by an 

 authorized disposal agency as defined by the Act. This did not apply to the 

 major portion of the property from OSRD contracts which was retained 

 by the Government for its own use, nor did it apply to that retained by the 

 contractors. Most of the items remaining as surplus came within the classi- 

 fication of nominal quantities which the authorized disposal agency would 

 not handle or were refused on the basis of a predeclaration inspection be- 

 cause of their special nature or poor condition. While some single items and 

 groups of items were declared as surplus, this method of disposal did not 

 reach the proportions originally anticipated. When used, it resulted in mate- 

 rial delays in moving the property from contractors' premises. The few 

 pieces of surplus real property were disposed of in accordance with the 

 provisions of the Surplus Property Act. 



At various times the suggestion was made that OSRD should distribute 

 the property remaining under its contracts to educational institutions to 

 enable them to build up their research activities. It was never given favor- 

 able consideration within OSRD partly because the policies governing the 

 disposition of surplus property were for the determination of Congress and 

 partly because OSRD had dealt with only a fraction of the educational in- 

 stitutions in the United States and a policy of building up research facilities 

 should not be confined to that fraction. In 1944 and early 1945, however, 

 when it appeared that large quantities of new and special equipment would 

 become surplus, a number of conferences were held with officials of the 

 Office of Education and of the Surplus Property Board with a view to 

 developing a procedure under which the property could be turned over to 

 those agencies which would make it available to educational institutions of 

 their designation for research purposes. The decision of the Services to ex- 

 pend their peacetime research programs, with the resultant transfer of the 

 property to them for that purpose, made it fruitless to pursue those plans 

 to a conclusion. Nevertheless, some of the more specialized property doubt- 

 less found its way into the possession of institutions able to make the most 

 effective use of it under contract with the Services who received it by trans- 

 fer from OSRD. 



