LGSD Offers additional insight on its decision to turn down electric bus funding.

LA GRANDE – Near the end of May 2024, the EPA announced that the La Grande School District (LGSD) had been selected to receive a $2,020,000 rebate to help purchase ten new electric buses. In early June, the LGSD announced it would not be moving forward with the bus funds largely due to a combination of high costs that the district would still have to foot the bill for, and impracticality of adding ten new buses to its fleet given their limitations.

Elkhorn Media Group recently spoke with LGSD Superintendent George Mendoza who offered further insight into the district’s decision and why the ordered buses couldn’t be reduced to a more practical amount. According to Mendoza, the Mid-Columbia Bus Company, who La Grande contract for bus services, initially applied for rebate funds to cover ten electric buses. At the time, the district was (and still is) only interested in two or three buses to trial on town only routes in a limited capacity.

However, the funds provided didn’t cover the full costs for the buses nor any of the costs for charging infrastructure, leaving the district a roughly $240,000 bill per bus. When asked why the district couldn’t use the funding to completely cover the costs of three buses instead, Mendoza told EMG that, as La Grande is not considered a priority school district by the EPA, any rebate funding provided is only allowed to cover half the costs of any electric buses purchased, regardless of the specific number. Likewise, infrastructure cannot be covered by this funding due to the non-priority status.

With more buses than it wanted and with a high guaranteed bill no matter the amount purchased, the La Grande school board made the decision to decline the funding. This is not a blanket denouncement of all electric buses by the district, but it’s unlikely that any will be brought into the fleet unless a majority of costs can be covered in advance. As stated by Mendoza:

“We were not considered a priority school district, so we did not get full funding for the buses, and we would have to come up with additional funding. So, it was a good process to understand better, but something where we need about 100 percent of the buses covered, and I would even prefer 100 percent of the infrastructure cost covered to make it something that really makes sense for our school district.”

The previous articles on the La Grande electric bus funds can be found here: https://elkhornmediagroup.com/la-grande-school-district-will-not-be-moving-forward-with-electric-school-bus-funds/  and here: https://elkhornmediagroup.com/epa-selects-la-grande-school-district-for-2020000-in-electric-school-bus-rebate-funds/

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Elkhorn Media Group