The Cortland Enlarged City Schools District Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to buy four school buses – two diesel-powered and two electric.
The 66-passenger electric buses would cost $437,000; the 84-passenger diesel buses would cost $203,000 each, states a memo from district Business Administrator Kristopher Williamson to Matthews Buses revised Tuesday. But the state Bus Incentive Program would contribute $203,000 for each of the electric buses. Combined with the $35,000 trade-in for the four buses these would replace, the final cost would be $736,000.
The measure would need voter approval in a referendum next May, as voters consider the district’s 2025-26 budget.
A number of districts have been awarded grants to assist with costs; a late-May report in the Mid-Hudson News showed Environmental Protection Agency grants awarded to school districts ranging from $145,000 to $345,000 to districts buying one bus each, to a district receiving $800,000 for four buses. Another district, Hyde Park, was awarded $3.4 million to buy 17 electric buses.
And the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced last week $125 million in grants to New York to buy zero-emission heavy vehicles, including $78 million for buses.
“A clean, zero-emission transportation sector in New York will support good-paying jobs and protect communities overburdened by air pollution,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), in a release. “This over $78 million investment will help New York transition to cleaner electric school buses and vehicles while also expanding charging infrastructure.
The school district would need recharging facilities for the electric buses near its bus garage at the Kaufman Center, 1 Valley View Drive. However, as part of its contract to lease the 14-acre former Rosen Brothers Scrap yard site from the city of Cortland for a solar facility, Cortland Mayor Scott Steve said in late October that Tennessee-based Davis Hill Development agreed to install an electric charging station.
School Districts across New York are beginning to transition to electric buses to comply with a state mandate that they begin transitioning to electric bus fleets by 2027. The state requires that all school buses in the state be electric by 2035.
In the Capital District, Queensbury and five other districts will receive grants via the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new Clean School Bus Program. Queensbury said on its district web page it will receive $800,000 to buy electric buses early in the spring of 2025; its superintendent called the amount of grant money “game-changing” and said it benefits taxpayers financially.
Yet voters in several Central New York school districts – Baldwinsville, Ithaca and Newfield in Tompkins County, and Mexico in Oswego County – rejected proposals to buy one or more electric buses, but approved spending money on buses burning traditional fuel.
In 2023, Marathon voters forfeited a $1.2 million federal grant, enough to buy three electric buses and a charging facility, in a 243-78 vote.
Opponents of the electric-bus requirement have raised concerns about costs, and fear that the electric buses won’t perform well in the winter cold of upstate New York, media reports say. Supporters of the requirement say the buses don’t emit fumes from burning fuel, leaving the air safer to breathe.
