Sedgwick County has a potential new home for their administrative offices.
The county will put down an earnest money deposit of $50,000 for the Envision Building, located at 610 N. Main in downtown Wichita. The county will have 120 days to inspect the property. If it meets their needs, the county would purchase the site for $11.95 million and would lease office space to Envision.
County Manager Tom Stolz says they have options and there's no guarantee that this property will be their new home.
Commissioners hope to receive precise cost estimates by mid-August. Administration is currently at the downtown Ruffin Building, where the county has leased office space since 2022.
In related news, the latest annual audit of Sedgwick County's financials came back clean with no issues reported.
This is the fifth year in a row that no discrepancies have been noted, compared to 20 issues found with the county's audit in 2016.
The report says the county has around $100 million in the general fund. It also states that over the last 10 years, the organization has become increasingly reliant on property tax to cover expenses, with the bulk of that covering public safety.
The audit took around seven months as analysts spent about one thousand hours looking over the county's finances. By law, the audit must be completed within 180 days of the end of the fiscal year, which for the county was December 31, 2024.