Customer is king at City Hall
IN THE CITY
by Deborah Ouellette
This is an update from the Tax/City Clerk office to keep you up on the latest developments.
As part of the city’s focus on continuous improvement, we are pleased to announce some important changes to enhance our delivery of services. If you have been to City Hall recently, you’ve probably noted some of these already. Others are still being implemented, and you will see our progress going along.
• Front desk regular business hours have been expanded to 8 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. We have accomplished this by staggering cash-up times and by using flex time for the clerks to adjust their beginning and ending work hours on a weekly basis. So we have been able to expand our coverage in a way that does not impact the city’s budget overall.
• The Rapid Renewal program of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles is now available 24/7 for customers wanting to renew a motor vehicle or trailer registration online. You can find the website at http://www.informe.org/bmv/rapid-renewal/. Payment is currently deducted from your checking or savings account at the time of renewal. We are exploring the possibility of offering payment by debit or credit card as well.
• We are now authorized as BMV agent to issue the Agriculture Commercial and Agriculture Farm specialty plates. These plates were previously available only at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles branch in Caribou.
• The City Clerk is automating our process for managing vital records. We are in the process of creating an electronic database of birth, marriage, and death records in our Trio software. This will allow us to issue certified copies of vital records as printed abstracts of the original document.
• The City Clerk is automating our process for issuing various business licenses as well.
• We are formulating a plan for accepting credit and debit cards for routine transactions at the front desk. This involves developing a new policy and working with our software vendor to integrate electronic payments processing with our computer system. The process is lengthy but should be fully implemented by the fall.
• This plan may eventually be expanded to include acceptance of credit and debit card payments by mail and over the telephone.
We always want to meet your expectations in our delivery of services to the citizens of Presque Isle, and these changes will help us reach this important goal.
Deborah Ouellette is tax collector for the city of Presque Isle. She is also municipal BMV agent and manages the front desk at City Hall. She can be reached by telephone at 764-2509 and by e-mail at douellette@presqueisleme.us. Rapid Renewal and Trio software are registered trademarks of their respective owners.
