Beginning next week, appointments will be required to visit the metropolitan offices of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles for almost all services.
DMV officials blamed continuing staff shortages and high customer demand for the elimination of walk-in services at the agency’s six largest metropolitan offices including Carson City and Reno.
“We have seen an actual decrease in use of our online services at the same time we’re facing an ongoing staffing shortage,” said Deputy Director Tonya Laney.
She said eliminating most walk-in services is the best way to encourage Nevadans to go online.
So beginning Aug. 15, walk-ins will be accepted only for vehicle movement permits, license plate drop offs, reinstatements, past-due debts, kiosk transactions and vehicle inspections.
Walk-ins still will be accepted on Saturdays as will commercial customers at those centers in Reno and Henderson. Services provided in rural DMV offices also will remain unchanged.
DMV officials say there are more than 200,000 transactions a year that customers could do online but, instead, choose to visit a DMV office. That includes registrations and renewals. The agency’s problem is they have 108 vacant positions in the Field Services Division and 196 in the department as a whole — a 16 percent vacancy rate.
Laney said DMV is running two academies to train about 35 new workers but said it takes about eight weeks to properly train a new employee. She encouraged anyone interested in a DMV job to submit a resume at dmv.nv.gov/jobs.
Once more technicians are at work, she said the wait time to get an appointment should get significantly shorter. That wait time is just two weeks in Reno and Carson City but a month or more in the south.
Laney said DMV’s future is in online services, not in person services. She said over the next couple of years, more and more services will be made available online.
