A map showing where the electric school buses (light blue) will be parked. The red line is the trench for the charging stations. Click image to enlarge.
Workers have begun digging a trench at the east side of the Doherty’s Garage property to install charging stations for a new fleet of electric school buses.
As part of the project, the grassy area now occupied by cars awaiting repair will be paved, expanded, and moved 21 feet closer to the tree line, though only one tree will be taken down. The EV transformer will supply electricity on two different meters for Doherty’s and the public, which will have access to two new charging stations in the adjacent dirt commuter lot.
The Lincoln Garden Club’s plants in the area were removed but will be replaced, and there will be new plantings on the Lincoln Road side of the property to partially screen the school buses from view. The Planning Board approved the addition on October 28.
“It’s going to be a huge improvement. Right now it looks like a junkyard. The site needs to be cleaned up,” said Paula Vaughn-Mackenzie, director of planning and land use.
Board members asked why the buses need to be charged and parked full-time at that location rather than at the Lincoln School or the DPW on nearby Lewis Street where they’re now stored. Scott Rodman of the Green Energy Committee, who has been working with property owner Mike Callender and Highland Electric Fleets, replied that the school had neither access to enough power nor space to park the buses with sufficient turnaround room — “much to my chagrin, because I thought was perfect place for them, too,” Rodman said. “I tried everything humanly possible.”
The buses also can’t be parked behind the garage building because it’s too close to wetlands. As for the DPW, the town expects to rebuild the site at some point, and when that happens, there won’t be room for the buses there either. It wouldn’t make fiscal sense to install the EV chargers there and then later tear them out and reinstall them elsewhere, Rodman said. “These chargers are very expensive — you can’t do it as a sort of temporary thing.”
A 2019 town study said that the DPW would have to be replaced at what was then an estimated cost of $15 million. Consultants looked at several alternate sites in town and concluded that the current Lewis Street was the most suitable.
For now, Doherty’s will keep some of its diesel buses as backups and for use on field trips and longer athletic trips; eventually they will be phased out, Callender said. He asked the board to approve the plan right away to qualify for grant funding. The project needs to be up and running by January 1, 2026; “otherwise, several million dollars in federal and state funds may go elsewhere, and given the political climate, may not return,” he added.
Doherty’s and the school agreed earlier this year to amend their contract to allow introduction of the new buses, and the change will not cost the schools or town any additional money.
Though everyone agreed that electric school buses are a good idea though not without some grumbling about the fact that the application was submitted as a “minor change” to the property’s site plan.This meant that a public hearing was not required and some board members found out about the proposal rather late in the game, though Reid McIntire, project manager at Highland Electric Fleets, said they’d been working on the plan since April.
“I’m shocked that we just found out about this — you’re putting a gun to our head,” said board member Rob Ahlert. “I feel like it came out of nowhere, though maybe it’s all good.”
“On principle, I believe this is a major modification, but I also believe that this project needs to move forward,” said board member Susan Hall Mygatt, who urged the board to have a future discussion of what exactly constitutes “major” and “minor” changes to site plans. Ultimately, though, members unanimously approved the “minor change” designation and the project itself.
“This is a real chance to do something that would be unusual for a town as small as Lincoln,” board member Gary Taylor said.
This article raises several issues. Given that the federal funding is highly unlikely, does the town have a plan to backfill that money? Because it would be a shame to do a lot of paving if the project dies for lack of funding. The other question is who is LLC trust who owns the building. Is that still the Doherty family?