Those going to pay their car taxes will probably need some patience, clerk says

Guns and Roses first sang in 1989 that all you need is “just a little patience.”

Those planning to visit their local county clerk’s office in the near future to pay their motor vehicle taxes and renew their vehicle registration will probably want to heed Guns and Roses advice about patience.

Be warned, you may need more than just a little patience too.

Throughout January, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has been converting its legacy motor vehicle registration system knows as AVIS, which was implemented in the late 1970’s. The new modern system that has replaced it is knows as KAVIS, but the conversion has not gone as smoothly as hoped.

The Kentucky County Clerks Association (KCCA) is asking for its motor vehicle customers’ patience as it works with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to resolve the issues at hand.

“We continue to see improvements with the KAVIS system each week, however, there are still times when the program is unresponsive or specific transactions are not processing. Because of these issues, we are being forced to turn away customers. It is always our priority to serve our customers, but the new system’s shortfalls are preventing us in some instances,” said Whitley County Clerk Carolyn Willis.

“While county clerks throughout the Commonwealth pride themselves on providing excellent customer service, it has been a struggle to perform at the levels we expect due to the system’s processing errors,” Willis added.

“Although we have faith in the KAVIS team and their ability to correct the issues, we must be transparent with our customers. Wait times will be longer, and there are transactions that we cannot process. We would love to specifically identify the problem transactions but that changes daily as the programmers work to fix issues.”

The Kentucky County Clerks Association asks customers to be as prepared as possible when they visit their county clerk’s office.

The following steps will make your visit to the county clerk’s office more efficient:

• Bring your driver’s license or state issued identification card.
• Bring your renewal notice and previous year’s registration.
• Bring your Kentucky proof of insurance printed or refer to your county clerk if there is an insurance email address or fax number available.
• Be prepared to wait longer than normal due to the new system having issues with processing and creating PVA issues where clerks must contact the PVA to correct issues. It takes time to work through each customer’s account and merge vehicles for each customer.
• Web renewals do have an issue with trailer fees, but the Kentucky County Clerks Association has requested that the transportation cabinet turn the web renewal portal back on even with the fee issue with trailers. If you have a trailer to renew, we recommend you wait for further communication when fees are corrected for any trailer transaction.
• For any transaction by mail, online or drop-off please include a contact phone number so the clerk’s office can reach you.