Until last fall, most transactions at Wayzata City Hall's reception desk consisted of building permits and other routine paperwork, with a passport application now and then.
Then November came. People who wanted to go to Europe and China and who knows where began lining up for passports. The full-time desk clerk and a part-time colleague were quickly overwhelmed.
"We're a small community, with a small staff," said Wayzata City Manager Heidi Nelson. "We used to serve just our little area, and now we're serving the entire west metro."
The flood of passport applications began after federal security requirements caused Hennepin County to stop offering passport services. City service desks in Bloomington, Richfield and Robbinsdale also have been swamped.
Though cities receive $25 for processing each passport application, so far the revenue hasn't been much of a financial boon for a city like Wayzata.
It handled 97 applications in November and 126 in December after processing an average of 21 per month before. Because of the demands on its staff, Wayzata now requires passport applicants to make appointments, capping the number at eight a day.
Richfield, which has seen the number of passport applications triple to 40 to 50 per day, hired another clerk. In Bloomington, which processed 236 applications in November compared with 99 the November before, City Clerk Janet Lewis renewed her passport agent certification so she could step in to help the five other certified workers when it's busy.
Robbinsdale used to handle about 15 passports a week but sometimes does 30 a day now with the same staff, said Brenda Yancey, motor vehicle coordinator.