More parking at new Sedgwick County tag office, but long drive for inspections

A new motor vehicle tag office will mean more parking for people who come to downtown Wichita to register their cars, but a long drive to another city for 18,000 customers a year who have to have their vehicle inspected before they can register it.

The new office will have 82 parking spaces set aside for tag office customers, about three times as many as at the current parking-impoverished tag office at 200 W. Murdock.

But customers who find they need an inspection will have to go to a new Kansas Highway Patrol station in Kechi to get it, about a 23-mile round trip from downtown.

Sedgwick County officials got their first look last week at the floor plans to move several local government departments to a newly purchased former Internal Revenue Service building at 271 W. Third St. The tag office will take up the first and part of the second floor of what is being called the “271 Building.”

The county bought the building last year for $5 million and is projecting to spend about $6 million on renovation. In addition to the tag office, it will house the planning and building departments, the appraiser’s office and sheriff’s internal affairs investigators.

But absent from the architectural drawings for the tag office was space for Highway Patrol troopers to conduct vehicle inspections, which they now do out of a small room at the Murdock office.

The reason it’s not on the drawing is that the patrol is building a new regional headquarters near K-254 and Rock Road in Kechi. When it opens, slated for August or September, it will become the only site where inspections will be offered in Sedgwick County, officials said.

The patrol also will be discontinuing its one-day-a-week office hours at the county’s three satellite tag offices in Derby and east and west Wichita. The new patrol office will be a 40-mile round trip from Derby.

State law requires that the Highway Patrol, or another law-enforcement agency contracted by it, inspect the vehicle identification numbers on cars brought in from out of state, cars reassembled with parts from more than one car, or cars with otherwise questionable ID numbers. The inspection fee is $20.

Capt. Dennis Marten, commander of the Highway Patrol’s south-central Kansas Troop F, said there are several advantages to doing all the inspections at the new headquarters.

The site was designed to have adequate parking for the inspections and will have a covered garage, so troopers inspecting cars will have cover from the weather, which they don’t have now.

In addition, he said, it will be easier for troopers on site to deal with any stolen vehicles or parts that turn up during the inspections.

Last year, the patrol conducted 22,000 inspections in Sedgwick County, about 18,600 of them at the Murdock office. They found 23 stolen cars and one stolen engine, according to patrol records.

Sedgwick County Treasurer Linda Kizzire said the county’s tag offices processed about 603,000 transactions last year, 382,000 of them at the Murdock office.

She couldn’t say how many individual customers that represents, because many patrons have multiple vehicles and do more than a single transaction per office visit.

She said she was disappointed when she was informed that the Highway Patrol wouldn’t be making the move when the tag office relocates.

That’s scheduled for the fall of 2016.

“I would have loved to have had the Highway Patrol stay with us,” Kizzire said. But while she’s in charge of the tag offices, where to do the inspections is the patrol’s decision.

“There was nothing I could do about it,” she said.

For her employees and customers, the office at the 271 Building will be a huge improvement over Murdock, she said.

“Murdock’s an insufficient facility, as all of you are aware,” Kizzire told the commission last week.

In addition to its parking problems, the Murdock office wasn’t designed with work stations adequate for the computers, printers and other technology that now virtually encase the employees at the counter.

“If you’re claustrophobic, you’re not going to last long there,” she said. “We’re not looking for a Taj Mahal; we just want a decent work environment.”

The new tag office will be twice the square footage of the old one, according to the architectural plans.

It will have 11,530 square feet on the ground floor, containing the public areas, the mail room, file storage, break room and bookkeeping, plus another 3,100 square feet of management offices on the second floor, for a total of 14,630 square feet.

The Murdock office has 6,778 square feet.

In addition to the tag office, other departments that will be moving to the 271 Building include:

▪ The county appraiser’s office. It will have 15,430 square feet on the second and third floors. That office will be moved from rental space at the former Wichita Mall on Harry Street.

▪ Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department. A combined city and county department that handles building codes, permits and inspections, the department will move from City Hall and get 11,150 square feet on the fifth floor.

▪ Metropolitan Area Planning Department. The combination city and county planning department will move from City Hall and occupy all 13,000 square feet on the sixth floor.

▪ The sheriff’s Office of Professional Standards. Investigators will move from rental offices at Ecco Plaza, on Main Street near the county courthouse. The new office will have 1,650 square feet on the second floor of the 271 Building.

Sheriff’s Col. Richard Powell said the unit, which handles public complaints and investigates allegations of employee wrongdoing, needs to be separate from the main sheriff’s facilities. Studies show that people who have problems with a law enforcement officer are reluctant to take those complaints to a regular station, he said.

“We certainly don’t want to hinder or make anyone uncomfortable to the point where they won’t share that with us,” Powell said.

Overall, the 271 Building will house 255 employees, said Assistant County Manager Ron Holt. He said the county has lined up 203 parking spots for them, in addition to the 82 customers-only spaces for the tag office.

Holt said that should be enough for the employees because, with vacations and field assignments, all 255 employees won’t be there at once.

Most of the employee parking will be in city-owned lots near the 271 Building.

This story was originally published March 28, 2015 at 2:11 PM with the headline "More parking at new Sedgwick County tag office, but long drive for inspections."