NC DMV headquarters will be in Rocky Mount by Christmas, but many workers stay behind
The state Division of Motor Vehicles has begun to move its headquarters from Raleigh to Rocky Mount, but many of its workers won’t be going with it.
About a third of headquarters employees have chosen to leave DMV rather than follow their job an hour’s drive east to Rocky Mount, according to Commissioner Torre Jessup. With the move expected to be completed by Christmas, the agency is working to fill dozens of vacant positions.
DMV has actually had less attrition than feared, Jessup says. A survey of 255 DMV employees in early 2019 showed that more than half intended to quit if the agency left its longtime home on New Bern Avenue for Rocky Mount, and many others were uncertain about staying.
The vacancy rate for jobs at DMV headquarters hovered around 15% until last summer, when it began an almost steady rise to about 27% at the end of September. On Sept. 28, DMV was trying to fill 132 of its 495 headquarters positions, a snapshot that doesn’t reflect the number of jobs it has already filled.
Jessup told members of the state Board of Transportation last week that DMV is having some success hiring people from the Rocky Mount area, which had a 9.1% unemployment rate in August, tied with the Fayetteville metro area for highest in the state.
“We’ve got a community that really wants the opportunity, and we’ve found some really good employees,” he said.
DMV does not know what portion of employee departures are related to the move, according to Portia Manley, who is helping coordinate the transition.
“They are not required to give a reason for leaving when they give notice,” Manley wrote in an email. “So we don’t know if it was to take another job, didn’t want to do the commute, are moving out of the area or have just decided to stay home and no longer work because of current conditions.”
The employee survey and “listening sessions” with employees in 2019 showed most workers wanted to remain living in the Triangle and were reluctant to commute to Rocky Mount. DMV mapped where its headquarters employees lived at the time and calculated that it would take them an average of 57 minutes to get to the Rocky Mount complex and about the same time to get home.
Robert Dalton is among the DMV employees who left because of the move to Rocky Mount. Dalton was a supervisor in vehicle records when he was faced with the prospect of a much longer drive to work from his home in Raleigh.
“It was going to add 106 miles to my daily commute,” he said. “So obviously that was a no-brainer, that I didn’t want to be doing that.”
General Assembly bill led to DMV’s move
DMV did not seek to move to Rocky Mount. The two buildings that make up its headquarters on New Bern Avenue have problems with asbestos and fire safety that the State Construction Office and the Department of Insurance determined were too expensive to fix. In exchange for some minor changes, the agencies agreed to let the DMV stay until Nov. 18, 2020.
Then in 2018, the state budget approved by the General Assembly included an item directing DMV to vacate its offices by Oct. 1, 2020, and seek proposals to lease new offices in Wake or surrounding counties. DMV received a dozen offers at nine sites — all in Wake or Research Triangle Park except one on the north side of Rocky Mount, which just qualified because Nash County touches Wake near Zebulon.
Because the Rocky Mount site met DMV’s needs at the lowest lease rate, the agency said it was obliged by state law to accept it.
This spring, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the General Assembly extended the deadline for DMV to leave New Bern Avenue beyond Oct. 1. About a third of positions have moved so far and everyone, including Jessup and other top managers, should be in Rocky Mount by Dec. 19, he said.
DMV is leasing about 208,000 square feet spread over five buildings in what was originally home of the Hardee’s hamburger restaurant chain and later headquarters of Centura Bank.
Lack of bus service may have been a factor for some employees in deciding not to stick with DMV. The New Bern Avenue site is served by GoRaleigh, and DMV worked with GoTriangle, Tar River Transit and other regional organizations to try to establish bus service between Raleigh and Rocky Mount, said Manley.
But Manley told Board of Transportation members that there was no money available for buses, so the idea has been shelved for now. That prompted board member Cullie Tarleton to ask if DMV has considered asking the General Assembly for money.
“It just seems to me they dumped this in our lap, and this is an issue that has arisen,” Tarleton said.
Jessup said there are other employers in the Rocky Mount area with workers who commute from the Triangle and there’s still a chance to establish some sort of bus service — just not before DMV’s headquarters will move.
“Time is not on our side when you talk about an undertaking of this magnitude,” he said.
New license and registration office in Raleigh
The new headquarters will not have offices where the public can get driver’s licenses or vehicle plates and registration. The plate and registration office on New Bern Avenue will remain in Raleigh and move next spring into part of a former Kmart in the Wilders Grove Shopping Center where New Bern meets New Hope Road.
Moving to Rocky Mount has cost DMV about $5.1 million, said Mark Scaringelli, the division’s director of business services. About half of that was getting the buildings set up with computers, phones and other IT equipment, while another $2.2 million was spent on cubicles, glass walls and other furnishings, Scaringelli said.
The departure from its longtime home in Raleigh has prompted DMV to get rid of a lot of paper records, Jessup said.
Over the past eight months, the agency has scanned more than 250,000 pieces of paper, allowing it to shred or archive the originals. Of the 643 file cabinets at DMV headquarters in Raleigh, less than half are expected to make the move to Rocky Mount.
This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 4:17 PM.
