DMV shifting vacant positions to Reno office

Cy Ryan and Eric Leake

Thursday, July 28, 2005 | 11 a.m.

Solving a growing problem of long waits at a Reno Department of Motor Vehicles office by taking proposed positions from Southern Nevada might be like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Nine vacant positions for the DMV in Southern Nevada will be shifted to Reno in an effort to combat long lines, a problem that has plagued DMV offices in Clark County for many years. The state department believes previous problems in the Las Vegas area have been solved by staff additions and other changes, but they'll get an argument from those still waiting in Clark County lines.

Harry Clark said registering a car took only 15 minutes in his former town of Stowe, Vt., but he said a visit to the Flamingo DMV office in Las Vegas in May cost him three hours.

"I should have brought my iPod," Clark said a half hour into his wait Wednesday, again at the Flamingo branch.

"I have been standing in line for a half-hour, and I just got here," he said as he waited for his number to be called.

"Into the queue they call it."

Clark said he would like to see more DMV branches and better use of satellite offices to handle more services.

"They're definitely taking steps in the right direction, but there's obviously more that needs to be done," Clark said. The action taken by the DMV this week to move positions from Las Vegas to Reno was prompted by complaints that motorists must wait up to four hours in some cases to transact their business at the Galletti Way DMV office in Reno.

"That's ridiculous. That's way too long," James Riley, 50, said of the wait time in Reno. Riley sat on the floor with his 4-year-old son at the Flamingo office Wednesday. He said he set aside his afternoon for the visit. "You have to plan for it. You can't be like, I hope it only takes an hour because I have to go somewhere," Riley said. "They're doing the best they can, I'm sure. We just have to be patient."

Tom Jacobs, DMV public information officer, said Tuesday it recognized the problem in Reno and 14 new employees begin training Aug. 1 and will start work the first week in October.

As part of the 14, nine vacant positions in DMV offices in Clark County are being shifted to the north, and the department will go before the Legislative Interim Finance Committee in November to request additional staffing.

Jacobs said the unfilled staff positions being transferred to Reno to take care of the immediate problem will have to be returned to Las Vegas sometime in the future.

"The wait times in the Las Vegas offices are under control," Jacobs said.

In 2003 Gov. Kenny Guinn aimed for an average wait of less than one hour. In the just completed 2005 fiscal year, the wait time at the Carey Avenue office in North Las Vegas was an average 57 minutes; 48 minutes at the Flamingo and Henderson offices and 44 minutes at the Sahara Avenue office, the DMV said.

Jacobs said despite complaints about four-hour waits, the average time for June in Reno was 97 minutes. Statewide the wait time was 61 minutes with three of the four metropolitan offices in the Las Vegas Valley under one hour, he said. In June the Flamingo office wait time averaged 67 minutes.

Wait times to license or register a car at the Flamingo office were closer to two hours Wednesday afternoon though nearly all of the 30 service windows were open.

"This is about typical," Sue Harris said after and hour and a half of waiting. "I think they should make it faster."

Other customers suggested the DMV allow people to make appointments and be more liberal in issuing line passes for those who require return visits. The DMV once allowed appointments for driver's license renewals, getting drivers out of the building within minutes.

The 2003 Legislature authorized 129 new staff positions for the department, most of them ticketed for Las Vegas. The new positions were intended to have all windows in the offices to be fully staffed, even during lunch hours.

"There were hard lessons learned in Las Vegas," Jacobs said. People waiting in line in Las Vegas are now processed quicker and more are being diverted to the kiosks.

He said in June the Carey and Flamingo offices posted more than 3,100 transactions at kiosks. There were 3,609 at the Sahara office and 2,179 in the Henderson office on Stephanie Street.

"There are virtually no lines at the kiosks," said Jacobs who added that the average transaction takes less than two minutes. But these are simple transactions that don't require dealing with a DMV worker.

In contrast, in Reno, the transactions totaled 1,432. He said some of the "best practices" might have not been used in Reno to reduce the lines.

The wait time at the Reno office ballooned from an average 48 minutes in fiscal 2004 to an average 69 minutes last fiscal year, Jacobs said.

Possibly clocking the longest wait at the Flamingo branch Wednesday was Zack Gartner, 16, who accompanied his friend Alec Featherstone, 18, who was on a standby list for a driver's test. The friends said they had been waiting since 7:30 a.m., more than eight hours.

"It's like a work shift," Featherstone said. He said he wished the branch had more people on staff because it seemed continuously overburdened.

Gartner said that after spending a full day waiting, he believes people have reason to dread visiting the DMV. "More so than the dentist," he said.