MUDDBAY

I ordered a set of personalized license plates for my pickup truck a couple of years ago right after I bought the house on Mud Bay. Not surprisingly MUDBAY was taken (it’s registered to the Bremerton owner of a silver Mercedes). I learned this from browsing a database of vanity plates on the Tacoma News Tribune web site. What did surprise me was that MUDBAY2, 3, and 4 were also gone—to a family living on Lopez Island. Nor was MUD-BAY available. So I settled for a spelling-challenged version (see photo).

The TNT database contains more than 86,600 entries. And that’s as of the beginning of 2008. At an extra $32 per registration annually, personalized license plates add almost $2.8 million in revenue to the state’s coffers. Just a trickle compared to the $9 billion budget shortfall that’s been in the news lately, but it has to help. So if you can afford it, go crazy and get a set of personalized plates this year. There are plenty of good ones left. For Prius owners, may I suggest MPG 45? To see if the plate you want is available, visit the Washington DOL personalized plates web page.

My only gripe about the plates is Washington’s new way of making them. I spent $49.75 to order personalized plates and waited something like six weeks to get them. Instead of having embossed characters like my old plates, the new ones have flat letters that look like they were put on with a decal. I wonder how much money that saves. Apparently not enough to balance the budget.