Plates from out of state?

If you’re a resident with out-of-state tags, that’s not going to fly in North Smithfield for much longer

NORTH SMITHFIELD — If your motor vehicle has out-of-state registration plates on it and you live in town, you might have to talk to someone about that in the very near future.

Local officials are looking for residents with vehicles registered out-of-state in the hope of enforcing state requirements for the proper registration of vehicles and the related tax assessments.

The town’s new focus can be seen on the message board out in front of the police station encouraging motorists to properly register vehicles and Town Administrator Gary Ezovski said there will also be a new enforcement campaign by the police department and the tax assessor’s office targeting improperly registered vehicles at local properties.

“If you live in town, your vehicle is supposed to be registered in Rhode Island with North Smithfield as your address,” Ezovski said.

There are reasons why someone living in town might have an out-of-state registration plate, such as a person receiving a work car from an out-of-state company, a student in college living in the town or some other exception allowed under the state’s motor vehicle registration laws. But if someone does have an exception allowed by the state, they need to show that to the local tax assessor, he added.

Members of the Town Council voiced concern about the number of cars in town that display out-of-state plates at last week’s meeting of the panel and Ezovski said the sign and the planned visits to identified problems areas are an offshoot of that discussion.

Councilwoman Clare

O’Hara told her peers she has observed a large number of vehicles at certain apartment and condo complexes in the town and suggested something needs to be done to recover revenues lost to any improper registrations.

The concern over the outof-state registrations comes as the state is in the process of rolling back its taxes on motor vehicles. Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello pursued a six-year plan to eliminate car taxes while providing communities with state aid to soften the impact. The first year of the reduction was approved in the current state budget and Gov. Gina Rai-

mondo has included the second year cut in her proposed budget now under review in the General Assembly.

Ezvoski said the registration effort is being conducted regardless of the state’s reduction in car tax assessments and suggested the issue is one of fairness where those registering their vehicles properly are paying for the local services also used by those with improperly registered vehicles and not paying car taxes.

“Until there is no obligation to pay under the law, it is their obligation to pay their fair share,” Ezovski said.

As part of the town’s information efforts on the registration requirements, Ezovski said Tax Assessor Sarah Frew and Patrolman Emmanuel Avila will be visiting five or

six of the town’s multi-family complexes to contact owners of out-of-state vehicles about their registrations.

“It may be that people are just moving in and it could be that there are a higher number of students,” Ezovski said. “It is going to be interesting to learn what the actual numbers are.”

Whatever the town secures in additional local registrations from the campaign won’t actually show up as revenue in

town coffers until next year, Ezvoski noted. The registrations are filed with the state Registry of Motor Vehicles and only come to the town as a database once a year.

“We won’t see the benefit of this until next year,” Ezvoski said, while explaining that new registrations would only be listed in next year’s state update to the tax assessors office.