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An Open Letter to the Grand Island School Board - April 2025
[N.B. I am not speaking at a School Board meeting about this because it would be a waste of my time. I am writing it here in the hopes that many Islanders will read it and act on it.]In 2021, I ran for the School Board (I lost). One of the questions on candidates’ night had to do with the draconian (my term) restrictions that the State Education Dept. and the State Health Dept. imposed on the operations of schools. One candidate stated that we are just doing what we were told to do. My response was decidedly different. I believed that we should be demanding that the above entities show justification for their policies. It isn’t sufficient to impose mandates without supporting evidence that they would accomplish their stated goals. We now know that they didn’t accomplish the stated goals nor were they based on any scientific data. We also know that the costs to the purported beneficiaries, the students, were and will be substantial.
Why do I bring this ancient history up? The State legislature is mandating that all new school buses acquired after 2027 be all-electric with the fleet being all-electric by 2035.
I won’t even bother to discuss the safety aspects of doing this other than to say I would never let a child of mine ride on one. The costs of complying with this nonsense will be substantial. Electric buses, today, cost $450,000 versus $150,000 for a diesel one. (One pathetic rationale given for going all-electric is that we will save on oil changes. The battery packs on these buses last 6-8 years and cost $80,000 to replace. You can’t make this up.) That is the price today when only suckers are buying them. When every school district has to submit orders, you can bet the price will rise.
This is only the beginning of the costs. They have to be charged. This will require installing a substation to supply the greatly increased amounts of electricity needed. Of course, it gets cold here in the winter. EVs don’t like the cold so we will have to build a heated (heated by what?) garage to hold all of the buses. We will also need to install a back-up diesel generator with the appropriate sized fuel tank for the times when the grid fails. Because of the massive weight of these vehicles, along with the start-and-stop nature of the bus routes, the buses will go through tires much faster.
Where is the electricity going to come from? The state has made a fetish of prematurely closing nuclear power plants as well as fossil-fueled ones. Solar and wind won’t do the job. The buses will be charged at night. Oh, yeah, the sun doesn’t shine at night. Homes need heat at night. So, who gets first dibs on the power? The School district or the homeowner?
The new (taxpayer subsidized) computer chip plant being built in Syracuse is projected to consume 10% (that’s not a typo) of the electricity consumed in the state. Where is the electricity going to come from?
The geniuses in Albany have never run a successful lemonade stand much less a business. They have no appreciation of the havoc their policies will wreak on families in this state. That’s all right. Their policies sound good.
Based on what I see as an impeding disaster for the taxpayers, I believe that the School Board has a moral obligation to tell us what the cost implications are for our property taxes. They don’t have to provide an exact amount per thousand of assessed valuation. A lower bound, i.e., it will be at least this much, would suffice. The number will shock everyone.
As things currently stand, this train is chugging down the track. The best that can be hoped for given the cowardice of the School Boards around the state to speak up, is that once the mandate starts to be implemented people will revolt at the cost. However, the taxpayers will still be stuck paying for garages, substations, diesel generators, etc. that are unneeded.
Providing the taxpayers with an estimate of the costs is not rocket science. It just takes willpower. Again, in my opinion, the School Board has a moral obligation to do so. It should be provided by the first week of classes this Fall.
James Mulcahy
