ORLANDO, Fla. – A specialty license plate for Edward Waters College in Jacksonville is the first to be discontinued under a new law passed by the Florida Legislature last year.
The law requires the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to discontinue the specialty plate with the fewest number in circulation after Jan. 1 of each year.
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Edward Waters, a private school among the state's Historically Black Colleges and Universities, had its plate enacted in 2002.
Previously, most university plates including Edward Waters had been exempt from any sort of minimum tag sales, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
The school had 714 registrations as of Jan. 1, according to the highway agency's data. That number is much higher than 12 other private school plates available in Florida. Those schools, however, opted to participate in a new simple standard template enacted by the law specifically for independent colleges and universities, the Sentinel reported.
Registrations for these schools act in a combined manner when the state determines its rankings.
Other schools with fewer registrations than Edward Waters that opted into the new template option include Lynn University, Florida Hospital College, St. Thomas University, Southeastern University, Florida College, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Keiser University, Ringling College of Art and Design, Eckerd College, Florida Southern and St. Leo University.
The Sentinel reported that other types of plates could be on the chopping block in 2022 and successive years.
Low performers as of Jan. 1 included the Kids Deserve Justice plate with 1,380 registrations, Agricultural Education with 1,467, Moffitt Cancer Center with 1,515, the NHL’s Florida Panthers with 1,987 and Scouting Teaches Values with 2,031.
The newspaper reported that the agency contacted the sponsoring organizations of the lowest performing 10% of specialty license plates on Dec. 1 to inform them of their plate’s status.
The new law placed a maximum of 150 specialty plates allowed in the state, and opened pre-registration for 33 more potential specialty tags. The new tags have a requirement of 3,000 pre-registrations before the department will begin producing them. Some of the plates, for out-of-state universities including Georgia, Alabama and Auburn, require 4,000 pre-registrations, the newspaper reported.
Plates have two years to reach their requirement before being pulled from consideration.
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