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Effort aims to keep Struthers’ BMV center
By jeanne starmack
struthers
A petition to keep the Bureau of Motor Vehicles license center from closing has 2,500 signatures, city officials say.
Mayor Terry Stocker says there will be a rally to save the center at 12:30 p.m. May 15 in the parking lot at the Struthers Plaza on Fifth Street, where the center is located.
The city learned last month that Deputy Registrar Terry Farmer lost his contract with the bureau for the Struthers center during a bidding process. The state awards contracts for the centers, which are privately owned franchises.
The bureau, a division of the state Department of Public Safety, awards contracts after scoring applicants on a points system. Farmer lost points for not having a credit-card machine at the center, said Lindsey Bohrer of the bureau’s communications office.
The Struthers center has been at the plaza for 18 years and employs nine people.
The person who won the contract for it, Roberta Gibson, is closing the plaza location and moving two miles away to Poland Township in a plaza near the Giant Eagle on U.S. Route 224.
Gibson would not comment, saying that deputy registrars are not allowed to speak to the press.
Bohrer said Gibson tried to renew the lease at the plaza and tried to find other viable locations in Struthers but could not.
Stocker and city council members learned from center workers that the workers are not being offered jobs at the new location.
They say they are concerned about the loss of jobs and the loss of spillover business for other stores in the plaza. The center processed an average of 50,000 licenses a year.
“The municipal court uses it to reinstate licenses,” Stocker pointed out. Struthers’ court serves neighboring communities also.
Stocker also pointed out that the plaza location is convenient.
“The 65-and-over crowd doesn’t want to go to 224,” he said.
The center turned over petitioners’ signatures to city council earlier this week. Council is preparing a resolution for its meeting Wednesday that will ask the state to reconsider allowing the center to close.
According to information from the Department of Public Safety, scores computed in the points evaluation should not be the only factor in awarding a deputy-registrar contract.
The registrar, Carolyn Y. Williams, can select a proposal that didn’t get the highest point score if she decides that deputy registrar and site would best serve the needs of the state and the residents.