The News10NBC Team details breaking News, Traffic and Weather.<\/p>\n
ALBANY, N.Y. \u2014 New York State is still moving forward with mandating districts switch to electric school buses.<\/p>\n
A Republican state senator introduced an amendment to repeal New York\u2019s electric school bus mandate this week, but it was rejected in Albany after every Democrat in the state senate voted to stay the course.\u00a0 That current course requires districts stop buying new diesel buses in 2027 and stop using all diesel buses by 2035.<\/p>\n
News10NBC has done nearly a dozen stories about cost<\/a>, infrastructure,<\/a> and reliability concerns surrounding the mandate.\u00a0<\/p>\n A handful of districts locally have started transitioning at least a few buses to electric. Gates-Chili has the most in our area with 15 electric buses in its fleet.<\/p>\n The buses work fine in Gates-Chili <\/a>because the routes are relatively short and densely populated, but they don\u2019t work as well in the more rural Naples School District in Ontario County.<\/p>\n The transportation director in Naples recently told News10NBC, the buses are much more expensive<\/a> to buy and to run \u2014 anywhere from five to eight times as much as diesel according to his data.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why state Senator George Borrello is looking to repeal the electric bus mandate. \u201cIf there\u2019s some school districts who feel this is right for them and they can afford it God bless them, but to mandate it all throughout New York State this one size fits all mandate is just irresponsible,\u201d Borrello tells News10NBC Investigative Reporter Jennifer Lewke.\u00a0<\/p>\n There have already been instances of electric bus referendums being voted down in local districts.<\/p>\n Jennifer Lewke (News10NBC):\u00a0 \u201cIf their voters are saying no, I\u2019m not letting you buy these buses and the state is saying you\u2019ve got to buy these buses, what happens?\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Borrello: \u00a0\u201cWell I sent a letter to the governor more than a year ago asking that exact question, what happens to school districts that can\u2019t comply? What happens to school districts where the voters have said no, we\u2019re not paying for these buses and I never got an answer from the governor.\u201d<\/p>\n Last February, when Lewke asked Governor Hochul about the concerns districts were raising<\/a> over cost, reliability, and grid issues, she did acknowledge the challenges. \u201cThis is aspirational, we want this to happen, but we also have to take into consideration that there are circumstances that have changed since this went into law,\u201d Gov. Kathy Hochul said at the time.\u00a0 The governor did go on to allow districts up to (2) two-year extensions to the mandate.<\/p>\n Jennifer Lewke: \u201cWe know dozens of schools have already applied for extensions. I think they\u2019re hoping that if they kick it down the road a little bit maybe you all in Albany will do something different. Do you think there\u2019s anything different that can be considered?\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Borrello:\u00a0 \u201cWell, look I think we\u2019ve kicked the can down the road enough with this that now it\u2019s to the point where these school districts have to make major decisions on infrastructure, on budgeting, they\u2019ve got to order these things well in advance\u2026I understand the governor wants to pretend like she\u2019s saving the planet and my Democrat colleagues the same but this is a multibillion dollar boondoggle that is largely unfunded and is really creating havoc in our school districts all across New York State.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0New York State Legislature<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0electric buses<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0power grid<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0state mandates<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The News10NBC Team details breaking News, Traffic and Weather. ALBANY, N.Y. \u2014 New York State is still moving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[53479,9,11,10,49,51,35337,50,3212,70970],"class_list":["post-174331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-electric-buses","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-legislature","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-power-grid","tag-state-mandates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}