It’s time for state officials to abandon Danvers as a Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) site and look to Peabody as the logical centralized and accessible location for licensing and other RMV business.
It is probably overly-dramatic to say Danvers is jinxed as a potential site, but the evidence is fairly compelling. The former Liberty Tree Mall site closed because of heating and ventilation breakdowns and other problems. A public search for another site zeroed in on Danvers Crossing with a location that ended up in foreclosure.
State Rep. Thomas Walsh has been a strong and steady advocate for bringing the RMV to Peabody. The former mall location in Danvers provided a central location for drivers and gave shoppers an opportunity to renew licenses or handle license plate transactions between purchases.
The Revere RMV site offers a mix of inconvenience with a location off two highways. The sites proposed in Peabody, including one on Margin Street and another on Lowell Street near Route 1, make sense for ease of access and familiarity to drivers.
Using the RMV ranks in popularity right up there with a visit to the dentist. It is a necessary evil in cases where a quick few taps of a keyboard won’t process a license renewal. There was a time in the distant past when the Registry, complete with its own police force, provided RMV sites in Lynn and other communities within a short drive for most residents.
State budget cutbacks and the resulting reduction in public workforce has downsized the RMV, making sites more scarce and pushing drivers to use online services to comply with legal motoring requirements.
The last vestige of an RMV presence in Lynn is the road test office located in the pedestrian walk-through at the commuter rail garage.
State offices are located in communities for a variety of reasons. Public convenience is one reason and, in the case of a service-intensive agency like the RMV, it should be the overriding reason.
But economics also come into play with state property locations. The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s move to Malden helped contribute to that city’s downtown revival.
North Shore Community College’s new Broad Street addition will help change the face of lower Broad Street and one end of downtown. But not all state siting locations make sense or represent well-conceived ideas. The two failed Danvers RMV locations are prime examples and they underscore why Walsh’s push to put Peabody front and center as an RMV location deserves serious review.