By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
The state’s driver's license bureau will soon be moving out of the Barton County Courthouse. It has been located on the second floor of the courthouse since 2004 when the county agreed to rent the space to the Kansas Department of Revenue which operates the bureau.
The Barton County Commission agreed at their weekly meeting on Tuesday to send a letter of termination to the Department of Revenue notifying that agency that the current contract will end in six months.
Commission Chairman Jim Daily said the county has another location that the state can use to issue driver’s licenses.
“It’s not like we’re just throwing them to the curb,” Daily commented. “We have offered them another space in a building that the county owns that is offsite from the courthouse.”
Daily was referring to the building that many people remember as Boogaart’s Grocery Store. It is owned by the county and currently houses the Cottonwood Extension District offices at 1800 12th Street. That agency will soon be moving to a new location on west 10th Street in Great Bend.
Commissioner Barb Esfeld told Eagle Radio what the county may do with the space now occupied by the driver’s license bureau.
"We would like to use it for our Treasurer’s Office. They’ve outgrown that area with their work,” Esfeld said. “And the other two uses that we are looking into are the County Clerk’s office during elections...they always need more room...and then the County Appraiser’s Office when they hold their hearings, they could use more room.”
The county currently collects between $20,000 and $24,000 per year for renting the courthouse space to the Department of Revenue. It’s expected the county would receive the same amount if the state chooses to move to the 12th Street building.
Esfeld says the new location would be more user-friendly because it doesn’t have stairs and there is parking closer to the building.