By Richard Crawford

A car zips in and zips out of the drive-through. A customer steps right up at a service window to handle a licensing matter and offers a comment about how nice the new building is.

The customer service is fast at the county’s new service center in Chanhassen. However, the number of people taking advantage of the new facility has plenty of room for growth.

“It’s surprising the number of people who walk through who say that they just heard we opened the doors,” said Laurie Engelen, taxpayer services manager with Carver County.

Actually, the Chanhassen Service Center opened at 7808 Kerber Blvd. (behind Target in downtown Chanhassen) in March.  The new facility, which cost about $3 million, was built to help ease the burden at the county’s original license center in Chaska and to provide better service to taxpayers, Engelen explained.

The Chaska site, which also received a $900,000 renovation and expansion last year, has maintained relatively high usage in the past year. Chaska is expected to always have more people walk through the door because the state has a driver’s testing service based at that location. However, the rest of the license offerings are the same, Engelen said.

In the nine months since the new facility has been open in Chanhassen, the number of people using the Chanhassen site is less than a third of the number seen in Chaska.

Engelen said now that the facility is up and running in Chanhassen the hope is to attract more customers to the Chanhassen site and continue to relieve some of the pressure from Chaska. Engelen believes thus far the vast majority of people using the Chanhassen facility are from Chanhassen.

Although the number of people using Chaska is down slightly from when there was only one service center in the county, there are still some waiting times for service.

“The volume is higher than what we would like,” Engelen said regarding Chaska numbers. “The waiting time in Chaska can range from a couple of minutes to 12 minutes or so. The norm in Chanhassen is immediate service.”

The county employs one supervisor, three full-time, five part-time and one temporary staff in Chaska. In Chanhassen, there is one supervisor, two full-time and two part-time staff members.

Projections

Overall, Mark Lundgren, the county’s director of property records and taxpayer services, said usage at the two sites is down from projections. However, usage at the Chaska site is higher than they were expecting.

Lundgren said revenues from the sites are down about 30 percent from what was projected. Digital advertising revenue inside the sites is also down more than 30 percent, he said.

The county is working on spreading the word on the new facility. An educational booth on the license centers was at the Carver County Fair this summer and educational material has been provided to an agency that welcomes new residents. A mailing to taxpayers this month also will include information about the new service center.

“We’re spreading the word,” Engelen said.

Lundgren said he expects the numbers in Chanhassen to grow in 2010.

“Once they know where we are, I think we’ll be in pretty good shape,” said Lundgren.  “We look forward to growth and it’s an excellent facility.”

Lundgren said the goal is to break even on operational costs in 2010. The county makes a small fee on licenses sold. The operation, Lundgren noted, is one of the few county divisions that generates revenue.

It’s somewhat like a private business in that regard, he said.

In addition to educating county residents on the availability of the Chanhassen site, Lundgren hopes residents from outside the county use the facility as well. Residents don’t need to live in the county to purchase licenses at the sites.

“I think we have a fair amount of Eden Prairie people who shop in Chanhassen,” Lundgren said. “We’re not fussy where they come from. We used to get a lot of Eden Prairie residents at the Chaska site.”

Richard Crawford can be reached at editor@chanvillager.com.

Customers at service centers in 2009

                                  Chanhassen                        Chaska

April                       1,155                                      4,905

May                        1,143                                      4,427

June                       1,506                                      5,033

July                        1,532                                      5,175

August                   1,498                                      4,504

Sept.                      1,405                                      4,167

(In April, average daily traffic in the Chanhassen facility was 58 and 145 at Chaska.)

Source: Carver County

Service Centers

What: Drivers licenses renewals and changes, ID cards, tab renewals, title transfers, hunting and fishing licenses, DNR registrations, passport processing and photos. Driver testing is only at the Chaska location.

ChanhassenWhere: 7808 Kerber Blvd.

Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Open until 6 p.m. Monday and Wednesday.

ChaskaWhere: 418 Pine St.

Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Open until 6 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday.