YAKIMA COUNTY -- Electronic equipment like laptops, digital cameras and desktop computers cost taxpayers thousands of dollars, but a lot of them have gone missing, and no one knows where they have gone.

Yakima County resident Lonnie Ubson voiced his concern, "Where is our money going? Is it going to the schools? It's going to something and where is that something at?"

To get some answers, Action News sent seven school districts in Yakima County a records request for their inventory reports. Only three districts were able to provide complete paperwork. It shows about $80,000 worth of equipment is missing. Last year alone, $17,024 worth of school equipment in Yakima school district went astray. Items range from Apple laptops, to Dell computers and projectors. It's even worse this year, $25,405 in inventory is already missing.

Yakima School District Assistant Superintendent Scott Izutsu explained, "Sometimes they are a result of record keeping, or may have been surplussed. Or in those cases, they probably have left the building."

Items have left the building, but know one knows where they have gone.

Granger, a school district less than half the size of Yakima, had about the same amount of items go missing last year as Yakima did: $16,999 worth of school items. Action News called them several times over the past weeks for answers, but no one returned our calls.

Action News reporter Audrey Asistio asked Sunnyside school district's community relations manager, "Should taxpayers be concerned?" Curtis Campbell responded, "I don't know, I'm trying to think. I mean, I'd be concerned but I mean, it's not just something that happens no matter what kind of business you run and it's unfortunate that it's taxpayers money."

Sunnyside school district had more than a dozen items missing or stolen from last year to present. They did not give us a dollar amount.

East Valley and Grandview did not provide reports in time for this story, even though we gave them a month to do so.

Wapato and Ellensburg tell us they do not keep track of items worth less than $5,000. Wapato officials claim they are not required to. But Wapato did provide their car inventory. Two company cars, a 1977 Chevy maintenance pick-up truck and a 1998 CB utility trailer were either stolen or misplaced. The district's accountant did not want to speak on camera. We asked if they have taken action to find the missing vehicles, like calling the police, but she could not give an answer.

"I mean we're paying more and more taxes every year and more and more stuff is coming up missing? Is there something that's going to be done about that? If not, then let's lower our taxes so we can have more money in our pockets," said Ubson.

In this tough economy, it is hard to see thousands of taxpayers dollars simply disappearing, and unless things change within the school systems, we will never know exactly where our money is going.

Some districts say they are trying to take a pro-active approach. Now that the school bond just passed for Yakima Schools, they plan to use some of the money for surveillance cameras. Sunnyside school district said they do get police involved when they suspect their school equipment have been stolen.

We will keep you updated on the school districts who were not able to give us inventory reports. We hope to have more answers within days.