Now is not the financial time to buy electric school bus

The school board made the right decision last week to pull the plug on accepting a federal grant to purchase an electric school bus.

Just because the EPA grant would have covered 90% of the purchase price doesn’t mean it was a good fit for Wrangell at this time. In this case, board members discussed it at a public meeting and voted down the idea.

But it was a close vote, with two of the five board members wanting to go ahead with the purchase.

It was a close vote because there are good reasons to run an electric bus rather than continue burning diesel. Climate change emissions, of course, but also the expense of filling the tank versus the lower cost of plugging into a charger. And if Wrangell is ever going to switch from diesel to an electric bus, getting the federal government to pick up 90% of the cost of a new bus is a strong argument in favor of doing it.

Yet the questions outweigh the benefits, at least for now.

There would be the additional cost of putting up a structure to keep the battery-powered bus warm, to ensure maximum range. The school district does not operate its bus service; Taylor Transportation does that under contract. Unless the district wants to get into the pupil transportation business, it needs to have its contractor on board to operate the electric bus — and that was not the case last week.

And even with the $383,000 EPA grant, the district still would have needed to draw down its dwindling reserves by more than $100,000 to cover the balance owed on the bus and to build a shelter to house the vehicle. The school district already plans to pull more than $600,000 from its reserves to cover spending for the 2024-2025 school year. It can sustain that level of drawdown one more year before it hits empty, unless the state and borough increase their contributions to the district operating budget.

No question the community needs both the state and borough to boost their school funding. But as state funding is at the discretion of the Legislature and the whim of the governor’s veto pen, and as borough funding is constrained by its own limited finances, now is not the time to take more money out of the school district reserves for an electric bus.

- Wrangell Sentinel