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Check Your Vehicle Registration, Folks |
Bill Hudson | 1/25/10
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Long-time Pagosan Addi Greer was pretty upset when she called me. She’d just paid a visit to the County Courthouse, where she’d forked out $100 in late fees — for failing to renew her vehicle registration when it was due last August.
And it appears Addi wasn’t the only person upset. Another long-time resident, who asked not to be identified, stopped me on the street a few days later, and told me almost the identical story: she had never received the annual renewal postcard normally sent out by the Archuleta County Clerk’s office, she told me — and had then been stopped for having expired plates. She had paid the $100 late fees at the Courthouse, plus a $90 ticket, she told me.
Her registration had also been due in August, the same month as Addi’s.
After I heard these two stories, I decided to wipe the mud off my license plate and check my own registration. Gratefully, I already had my yellow “2010” sticker. Thank goodness — a $100 late fee would not sit well with my bank account right now.
Addi said she’d been told by a clerk at the Courthouse that many people had come in and paid late registration penalties, claiming they had not received their usual renewal postcard in the mail. An unusually large number — maybe 100 or more — seemed to be from the August renewal period, Addi had been told.
 Archuleta County Clerk June Madrid and her staff mail out stacks of postcards each month, to remind vehicle owners that their registration renewal is coming due. The postcards tell you the renewal date and the amount due, and normally arrive a couple of months in advance of the renewal due date. You can then stop in at the Courthouse and pay your annual fee, or you can mail a check and receive your renewed registration in the mail a couple of weeks later.
You slap the sticker on your license plate and stick the signed renewal form in your glove compartment — and you’re all set for the next time you’re stopped by the cops.
But did something go wrong with the August mailing? Did a mess of renewal postcards get lost at the Post Office, somehow?
And is the County making a bundle of money on late renewals?
As I sat down with June Madrid last week, it was clear that Addi had already spoken to her, because June was just the slightest bit defensive as I broached this uncomfortable subject.
I explained that Addi had called me, urging me to publish a story on the Daily Post to inform people of the possible problem with the August mailing — and to encourage them to double-check their own license plates.
“It happens every month, that some people do not receive their reminder postcards,” June explained. “My staff thinks they noticed a unusually large number of late fees from last August. They didn’t keep any stats or charts, but they think they saw more people than usual come in and say, ‘I didn’t get my card.’ Every month, we get people who say they didn’t get their cards, and August was a big month.”
June’s office mails the cards as a courtesy. She is not required by state law to send reminders — and legally, it is the vehicle owners’ responsibility to keep their vehicles properly registered, whether they receive reminder notification or not. June declined to offer an explanation for the missing August cards.
She specifically did not accuse the Post Office of losing the cards.
Like most Archuleta County residents, I’ve become dependent upon those little postcards, to help me keep my vehicles updated. I doubt I would remember to renew, without the card arriving in the mail.
In June 2009, however, the state of Colorado passed a new law, adding a $25 per month penalty fee for late registration renewals — up to a maximum of $100. That obviously upped the ante for making our renewals in a timely manner.
“We’ve always had the one-time $10 late fee that the County collected. But the $25 a month Colorado Department of Transportation fee is new,” June explained.
“In fact, we never even enforced the $10 fee until two years ago — when we decided we needed the revenue. So we started collecting the $10 late fee.”
Like the state of Colorado, Archuleta County has recently been looking at ways to increase revenues in a declining economy. The County nearly went bankrupt in 2007, following years of deficit spending and questionable bookkeeping under various County commissioners.
According to June, however, none of the new $25-a-month late fee accrues to the County coffers. The $100 fee that Addi paid for her late renewal went straight to Denver. (Lord willing, it will be spent wisely. But I’m not holding my breath.)
“Last year, we collected about $65,000 in CDOT late fees,” June noted. “That’s all going up to the Department of Transportation. And that’s only from last July, when the new fees went into effect. I don’t think it’s fair. But we can’t waive it.”
No wonder the Pagosa economy is doing so poorly. We’re sending all our money to Denver. |
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