After re-opening the Wright County License Bureau last week, License Bureau Supervisor Becky Aanerud has announced that when the next two-week round of appointments for driver’s license renewals become available Friday, June 12, there will be more appointments being scheduled given the time required to process requests during the initial trial run.

The License Bureau had never scheduled appointments before, so Aanerud said it was a learning process and, based on the time it took to process driver’s licenses in the first two days following the public counter re-opening, the new schedule will include more than 100 additional appointment slots per week.

“The process has gone well considering we were going into it kind of blind and not knowing how it was going to turn out,” Aanerud said. “We have decided that we are going to re-do the schedule that will be released on the 12th. We are going to move the appointment schedule from 20 minutes to 15 minutes so we can get more people through each day.”

Under the 20-minute spacing of appointments, the License Bureau was able to process 63 driver’s license renewals a day (315 a week). Under the 15-minute schedule, it will be able to process 84 a day (420 a week).

Aanerud understands the frustration some have about the process, but, as with so many things COVID-19 related, normal is taking on different forms from one day to the next.

“I think this is just a new norm we have to get used to,” Aanerud said. “For those who need to get their license renewed, if they don’t get in right away, I’m sure some will be frustrated. But, like so many other things in our lives that have changed over the last three months, this is one of them. We will adapt to this and serve as many people as we can each day until we can get caught up.”