Residents will soon be able to have more state services at a local level, as Bow becomes the latest town to connect with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Starting Wednesday, Aug. 20, Bow residents will be able to register vehicles weighing up to 26,000 pounds, renew registrations and choose vanity plates at the town clerk’s office. These services previously required paperwork be sent to the DMV.

“The main benefit is that we can do more right here in the town hall than we could do before. I believe more people will be able to complete the registration without having to go to the state DMV,” said Town Manager Jim Pitts.

Previously, any vehicle weighing more than 8,000 pounds was required to complete its paperwork with the state. Now, Town Clerk Jill Hadaway said she will be able to help a larger number of residents.

“We’ll be able to deal with a lot more vehicles,” said Hadaway. “We’ll also be able to issue vanity plates, which we haven’t been able to do before. It’ll give us some new services that we’ll be able to offer.”

Because Bow staff will be training for the change of services, the town clerk’s office will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 12 and 13.

The main reason for the change is that the state is requiring all towns be linked through the Municipal Agent Automation Project. If towns aren’t ready by September, they won’t be able to do the municipal aspects of vehicle registrations. According to Hadaway, the process will be difficult at first.

“There will be a learning curve with it and it won’t be an easy adjustment,” said Hadaway. “We have a really good computer software package that the town uses for motor vehicles and I wanted to interface it with the state.”

Hadaway also said she has talked with other towns that are using the system already, and has learned both sides of it.

“There are a lot of rules and regulations on what the state required, so from talking to other towns it has advantages and disadvantages because it requires a lot of balancing,” she said. “We won’t know those until we have had the experience ourselves.”

Pitts said he looks forward to the town doing a variety of tasks by being online with the state.

“The state will no longer need to re-enter the information we put in, it’ll be going in as we type it,” said Pitts. “It’ll be one-stop shopping at the town hall.”