AURORA | These three letters have elicited more than their share of four-letter words: DMV.
The motor vehicle office is synonymous with long lines, epic hassles and generally the worst the American exercise in self governance has to offer.
Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Matt Crane has seen those long lines and standing-room only crowds packed into the county’s Department of Motor Vehicle offices first hand.
And he doesn’t like it.
“We’re not just accepting that and saying ‘OK, nothing we can do,’” Crane said.
Instead, Crane — who admits he can be “obsessed” with improving the offices most folks would rather never think of — envisions a day when a trip to the DMV is no-more bothersome than a trip to the store or any other errand grown-ups have to run.
Last week county officials unveiled a $600,000 expansion at the Aurora DMV office near East Alameda Parkway and South Chambers Road — the county’s busiest DMV and one of the busiest in the state with more than 250,000 customers annually.
The county purchased and renovated a storefront next to the office that used to house a church, adding 5,000 square feet to the 11,000 square-foot facility.
The addition means nine more service windows, bringing the total at the Aurora office to 31. They also replaced the old wooden pews with padded seats that offer “lumbar support,” the county said in a statement announcing the project.
Crane said the expansion at the Aurora office is one of several steps he has taken in recent years to improve the DMV experience. Free Wi-Fi makes passing the time more passable.
The county earlier this year unveiled self-service kiosks for license plate renewals, and Crane said that since those were installed in February they processed 6,000 renewals in Aurora alone.
Each renewal takes about five minutes of counter time, Crane said, so the kiosks have helped save about 500 hours in Aurora.
The county also posts wait times online so customers know about how long their trip will take.
Crane said customers can also save some time by skipping the busiest days at the DMV — generally Monday and Friday and most days around the first and the 15th of the month when most people receive their paychecks.
Making the experience smoother is important, Crane said, because the DMV is often where people have their most-direct and least-enjoyable contact with their local government.
“When you look at where we have the most day-to-day transactions with the citizens, it’s in the DMV,” he said. “When you think about inefficient government, the DMV kind of sticks out like a sore thumb.”
The Aurora office was particularly crowded Monday around lunch time, with county residents looking to get new plates, or new titles before the office closed for the July 4 holiday on Tuesday.
As is often the case, the parking lot was full and cars lined the street leading into the shopping center on the southeast corner of Alameda and Chambers.
Still, cheery clerks greeted customers at the entrance, sending some to the kiosks to renew their plates and handing others a number so they grab one of those lumbar-supporting new seats while they waited to be called.
Her number in hand — B-350 — Maria Gamez waited near the back of the room to get her plates renewed.
“Hopefully it’s not too long,” she said as the clerks called out number B-308 over the speaker — 42 spots to go.
Luckily for Gamez, after she snagged her number a clerk directed her to the bright yellow self-service kiosk on the west side of the building. While she waited to hear her number called the 29-year-old Aurora woman also waited her turn for the kiosk hoping that would speed up her Monday afternoon DMV trip.
Still, Gamez said as she waited, even if it took a while she was prepared to wait. After all, a trip to the DMV is rarely an in-and-out errand.
“We’re used to it,” she said with a shrug.
For Scott Graeser, the trip to get plates for a new vehicle took a little more than an hour Monday, but the 50-year-old Aurora man said he didn’t mind.
“I was expecting it,” said Graeser, who noted that the trip might have been faster had he not forgotten some things he needed.
With his new green Colorado license plates in hand Graeser strolled back to his car, not the least bit frustrated with what can often be one of the more-grueling ways to spend a summer afternoon.
“To be honest,” Graeser said, “it wasn’t bad at all.”