MOBILE MVD OFFICE READY TO HIT THE ROAD
Trailer will visit communities in remote areas across New Mexico
Daniel Roybal is proof that in state government good ideas sometimes flow from the bottom up.
Roybal, a clerk at a Motor Vehicle Division office in Santa Fe, came up with the idea of providing full MVD services to remote areas of the state via a mobile unit, so that people in some communities wouldn’t have to travel 100 miles or more to the nearest field office.
Roybal got the idea after recalling that when he was a child growing up in Chimayó, “my grandmother spearheaded the drive to establish bookmobiles that traveled around to rural communities in northern New Mexico,” he said. “It made a huge difference to the people there.”
The idea worked its way up the Taxation and Revenue Department’s chain of command, and eventually state money was provided to turn the concept into a reality.
On Monday, Gov. Susana Martinez launched the state’s first MVD mobile unit — a 42-foot trailer with slide-outs on both sides, a handicap lift, waiting area and four work stations with computers, each of which is staffed by an MVD employee. The trailer was purchased new for $192,000, and it is moved from site to site by a new $52,000 Ford F-450 pickup truck with a diesel engine and a bed-mounted fifth-wheel hitch.
“We started the mobile unit as a result of the governor’s initiative to make state government more efficient,” said MVD director Will Duran. “The mobile unit will reduce costs to the state by serving communities that need MVD services without opening a costly office in each community.”
Among the communities the MVD mobile unit will visit in near future are Angel Fire, Capitan, Crownpoint, Cuba, Dulce, Mesilla, Quemado and Ramah.
Department of Taxation and Revenue Secretary Demesia Padilla said additional MVD mobile units could be put into service in the future, depending on how many users avail them-
selves of this first one.
One of those first users was Flora Gallegos, who was transferring a title and getting new vehicle plates. She went to the MVD office near Montgomery and San Mateo, but decided to check out the mobile unit parked outside for the formal introduction.
“I sat in the waiting area for maybe 15 minutes, but after I got called it took only about 10 minutes to do the transactions. It was a pretty good experience,” she said, adding that past trips to MVD offices have taken two or three hours.
Martinez noted that MVD in just the last year has improved wait times at field offices, which now average less than 15 minutes statewide.