Tracy O’Connell, museum store and membership coordinator at the Museum Center at Five Points in Cleveland, Tenn., adds brochures touting specialty plates in the museum lobby.CLEVELAND, Tenn. – Tennessee now offers more than 90 specialty license plates, with beneficiaries ranging from the Appalachian Trail to universities and wildlife.
Behind the counter at the Bradley County Clerk’s Office, many of the plates are on display to motorists who are finding it’s time again to buy a plate or a decal.
Don’t see the one you want? Just ask a clerk. Others are filed in boxes beneath the display, because there’s not enough room on the wall.
“‘Friends of the Smokies’ is still our most popular,” County Clerk Donna Simpson said. “One of the newest is ‘Support Our Troops.’ It’s also very popular.”
More than $418,000 from 2010 sales of the “Friends of the Smokies” plate helped meet needs in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, according to a Thursday news release. That particular plate has raised more than $6.2 million since 1997, the release stated.
Specialty tags – which are different from vanity tags in which the buyer gets to pick the message – cost more, Simpson said. But without looking up the numbers, she thinks sales have remained about the same in spite of the weak economy.
“The buyers are just fond of their license plates,” she said.
The amounts that go to beneficiaries of specialty-tag revenue – including every university and college in Tennessee – depend on how the law is worded in each separate piece of legislation that creates each tag, Simpson said.
One beneficiary is the Tennessee Arts Commission.
“And that benefits us,” said Lisa Simpson Lutts, executive director of the Museum Center at Five Points. “It is one source for state grant money. It’s one source of revenue for nonprofits such as ours.”
In fact, the Museum Center has a brochure display touting license plates that benefit the Tennessee Arts Commission.
It does take some work to get a specialty plate added to the state’s variety. Simpson said 1,000 people first must sign up and prepay the added fee for the proposed plate. Then the artwork must receive state approval, she said.
SPECIALTY LICENSE PLATES
Details on all specialty license plates, including the cost and where the extra fee goes, are available at the Tennessee Department of Revenue website – www.tn.gov/revenue.