DMV Milford and Derby Service Centers to Close Until Further Notice

The Milford and Derby service centers of the state Department of Motor Vehicles will close until further notice starting next week, according to the DMV.

Milford is open Tuesday and Thursday and Derby is open Wednesdays and Fridays.

Both offices will close, effective July 24, and customers using the centers can go to other nearby full-service offices in Hamden, Bridgeport and Waterbury. Find information on other locations here.

The DMV said it does not have a date when the offices will reopen.

“Closing any DMV service, even on a temporary basis, is a difficult choice, but we also cannot continue to burden these centers’ customers with long wait times,” DMV Commissioner Michael Bzdyra said in a statement.

The centers are open only two days each week and each small office is staffed by two DMV personnel.

“The DMV lines in Milford City Hall have become just too long, and any closure would ripple into Derby where lines are also growing. Returning four staff workers to full-service DMV offices, where there’s also high demand Tuesday through Saturday, will help improve service overall where we serve many more people,” DMV Commissioner Michael Bzdyra said in a statement.

With lines and wait times growing in the small offices, the DMV plans to reassess how to use them, according to the DMV.

They said a recent study showed that more than 90 percent of visitors to the offices will wait in line for registration transactions when they could go online to do the transaction.

Licensing customers will have an online option next year, according to the DMV. They said they are working to enhance licensing to include “skip-a-trip,” which would mean customers could do one six-year license renewal online before needing to visit an office.

DMV officials said taking four staff members away from main branch offices to support each of these small centers severely impacts the services at the main branches and adds to wait times there, but operating with one person in each would cause further problems.

“We also have heard the Mayor of Milford’s concerns about the long lines during the last few months. We appreciate his cooperation in offering options. Unfortunately, we cannot add staff to help reduce lines. However, we are reassessing the overall operations of these small offices,” Bzdyra said.

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