Quesnel City Council has agreed to spend 20 thousand dollars to install an electric charging station at City Hall.
The money will come out of the Carbon Neutral Reserve.
Councillor Scott Elliott wondered if it shouldn’t go somewhere else.
“With us getting a new building outside here and our parking lot shrinking, was there any conversation about having these out at public works ? Four minute drive and it gives us more space out here because this will take two away.”
Director of Finance Kari Bolton noted that there would be a loss of time if it were at public works as the building inspector that uses the vehicle is based at city hall and can still work while it is charging.
Councillor Martin Runge wanted assurances that taxpayers wouldn’t be subsidizing public members with electric vehicles.
“I believe as we move forward in the EV space we have to be very careful that we don’t subsidize the people that purchase a vehicle at a higher cost, which are generally people with higher income. We have to be very careful, like I would actually like to see a pay station.”
City Manager Byron Johnson confirmed that this was one space just to meet the needs of the one electric vehicle that the city currently owns, and that bigger decisions still need to be made.
“We are working on a larger plan to talk about where there’s chargers, there’s obviously concerns about publicly owned chargers, do we want to be in the business of having chargers versus encouraging the private sector to do those chargers, so lots of discussions there.”
Mayor Ron Paull was not in favour of the city doing it.
“I don’t think that the city should be providing electrical charging facilities for the general public. I don’t see too many city owned gas stations around.”
Councillor Mitch Vik, the Chair of the Financial Sustainability and Audit Committee, said that this was just the very beginning of the journey on electric vehicles.
