© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Sedgwick County To Offer Military Veteran Discount Card

flickr Creative Commons

Sedgwick County is creating a new discount card program for military veterans and active-duty personnel.

The Sedgwick County Register of Deeds office will manage and operate the program. The office will issue a photo ID card to current and former military personnel to use at local businesses that provide veteran discounts on goods and services.

The program will help connect veterans to discount opportunities through a local website and the Veteran Providers’ Coalition of Sedgwick County.

“The veterans and military discount card program will be beneficial by helping veterans save money," says Tonya Buckingham, register of deeds, "while also encouraging some veterans to file their DD-214 [military discharge papers] with [our] office."

Buckingham introduced the program at the Sedgwick County Commission meeting Wednesday. She says the idea came from a similar program operating in Cook County, Illinois.

Commissioners approved the program by a unanimous vote. Commissioners David Dennis and Jim Howell have served in the U.S. Air Force. Dennis was a colonel when he retired.

Dennis says the discount card recognizes veterans’ service to the country, and offers merchants proof of military service.

“When we go into different locations, we can just show our retired military ID, and it goes pretty smoothly," he says. "But there are a number of folks who have served but don’t have a military ID."

The Register of Deeds office files DD-214 military discharge papers, and provides five certified copies for veterans and their families.

“It is a critical document," Dennis says. "Our register of deeds files those documents for free, and they are not accessible by the community at large."

The discount card program is expected to begin in a few weeks.

Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar. To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.