Curious flock to renovated DMV office

Andy Holtmann

Tuesday, July 29, 1997 | 9:43 a.m.

While rain flooded Las Vegas Valley, a flood of another sort was taking place at the East Sahara Avenue office of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

This flood involved people, all curious to see the newly remodeled facility, all with business to take care of on Monday.

Donna West, assistant chief of motor vehicle services, said she was surprised by the number of people who came to Monday's grand reopening of the Sahara office. Numbers given by her and DMV Public Information Officer Steve Leon placed the customer count at 105 in the first hour of operation, with as many as 15 people waiting outside before the doors opened.

"I guess it is obvious that everyone was waiting to see us reopen," West said. "This is the most known DMV office in the valley."

The office closed its doors in October of last year to begin remodeling designed to make the facility more customer friendly. One feature added was a "Q-matic" wall that directs customers to a designated station and prints them a "now serving" ticket. Large amounts of seating, an information desk, and more open space were also part of the design scheme.

"It's very nice," said Verlee Peterson. "There is still a bit of a wait, but you know how us customers are. It is nice to see plenty of seating, though."

West said the ultimate goal is to reduce the waiting time to 15 minutes with a maximum wait of 30 minutes. A computer in the manager's office keeps track of exactly how many customers are seeking a particular service and the wait that each ticket holder experiences before he is served.

If a ticket has not been served within the allotted 15-minute time frame, an alarm sounds on the computer alerting management of the problem. West said that for the first week of operation, the timer will be set to 30 minutes so employees can get used to the system.

"Our employees think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread," West said.

According to Leon, the Sahara office was conducting roughly 1,200 transactions a day before it closed. The temporary trailers set up in the parking lot to accommodate DMV users averaged nearly 300 per day.

"We needed a better design," he said. "We think we found it with this building. In fact, the architects are so proud of this customer-friendly design, they have plans to enter it into a competition."

Denise Heitman, 16, came with her parents, Bud and Dawn, to get her first driver's licence. While she said the design was nice, Heitman especially appreciated the workers.

"I was really nervous during my test," she said. "The lady who gave me the test was really friendly, as were the rest of the people who helped us today."

While many were generally impressed with the new facility, some offered suggestions to make it even better.

"I don't understand the queuing system," said David Bradford. "I'd like to know how many people I have in front of me and how long my wait time is. It seems like a random bingo game."

The Sahara office is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.