WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – One county school district will not be using electric buses to transport its students any time soon. They’re sticking to fuel for now.

The Pender County School Board voted to kill its contract with Duke Energy to provide three electric school buses to the district come November.

Board members say although the buses would be free to the district, for the first two years, they say taxpayers would be paying for them after that initial period.

Board Member Brent Springer made the motion to pull the plug on electric buses at its July 16 meeting.

“How much are the charging stations going to be? You don’t know. I don’t know. Nobody knows,” said Springer.

Board member Phil Cordeiro says Duke Energy informally agreed to sell the charging stations for the price of $1, but they say Duke Energy’s attorneys wouldn’t put it in writing.

“According to the contract, Duke reserved the right to charge the school system whatever amount it wanted to lease and/or buy those charging stations. The deal literally wrote Duke Energy a blank check,” said Cordeiro.

Springer says without knowing the price, he couldn’t commit to a contract.

“I’m not against electric. But, I read contracts with these companies that want to give us grants or are awarded grants, but the fine line says they’re not willing to revise the contract,” said Springer.

Aside from financial reasons, board members say the state already provides buses and fuel, just another reason they say they do not need electric buses at this time.

“It’s not gonna make any difference. The state provides us with buses, the state provides us with fuel. So it’s not it’s not gonna be any benefit or not benefit to us,” said Springer.

Fellow board member Beth Burns, on the other hand, did believe it would be a benefit to its students.

“I felt that the electric buses were an innovation that would have allowed us to give our students a tangible example of a real-world application to what they are being taught in those labs. These buses could have been used as teaching tools,” said Burns.

She also says though the project was taking longer than expected, the buses were already in production.

“While I had hoped the project would move more quickly, I didn’t see that as a reason to abandon the project in its entirety,” said Burns.

But Springer believes the district should provide a spark to what he calls real educational issues.

“A school getting built that’s too small, bus driver shortage, teachers’ pay. I mean, there’s a multitude of things going on. But with electric buses, that ship has sailed,” said Springer.

Springer and Cordeiro say they aren’t opposed to electric buses in the future, but they say this specific contract was not the right one.

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