Buena Park will be spending over $700,000 to start transitioning out some of the city’s vehicles with fully electric ones – raising questions on if the city is overspending its general fund budget.
This week, city council members voted 3-2 to front money for five electric vehicles and nine EV charging stations as part of an agreement with the Charge Ready Transport Program – a state-funded initiative overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission and administered by Southern California Edison.
Councilman Carlos Franco and Vice Mayor Lamiya Hoque voted against the proposal.
It comes as the city is in an over $2.2 million budget deficit for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, according to the city’s adopted revised budget.
According to a staff report, 100% of newly purchased vehicles over 8,500 pounds need to be a zero emission vehicle by next year. Two California bills also require the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% before 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2045.
“One of the ways to get to net-zero emissions is to have more electric vehicles,” said Buena Park Sustainability Manager Lotus Thai at the Nov. 10 meeting.
According to Thai, the city needs to switch about 20 of their vehicles with EVs, only representing 11% of their fleet, and 10 dual port charging stations by 2030. The money the city needs to front will be reimbursed by about $197,000 by the Charge Ready Transport Program.
Officials say the city would have needed to spend over a million dollars if they were to fully fund the project themselves. By going with the program, city staff say the city is saving $550,000.
“Knowing that these grants are becoming fewer and further between, this is a direction that we need to go in to achieve our climate goals, that it will only become more expensive,” Councilwoman Susan Sonne said.
“I think it’s incumbent upon us to take advantage of this opportunity and save the city that over half a million dollars that we would have to take on ourselves to do it without the grant.”
The proposal raised a series of spending priority questions from Councilman Franco.
“I am a little reluctant to make an immediate approval on something that feels rushed and isn’t immediately necessary to the city of Buena Park, considering that we’re spending about $700,000 from the city’s budget,” he said.
He said the program would commit the city to the EVs that will be purchased even as technology changes because of the charging stations’ 10-year operating requirement.
Franco also said that one of the two charging stations available to the public has been under repair for a significant amount of time.
“I’m really glad that we have a 10-year warranty on these electric chargers. I fear that members of the public would be a little saddened that the access to their chargers are not fully repaired when they’d like to charge their vehicles,” Franco said.
Councilwoman Joyce Ahn responded by supporting the program, saying the city council directed staff to apply for the grant only a few months ago, and another project approved by the council funded 13 EVs, making the purchase of five EVs with this program come out to 18 zero-emission vehicles for the city.
Mayor Connor Traut – who’s on track to get elected as an OC Supervisor – said he was torn on the item seeing that the city is in a tough spot financially, but ultimately supported the resolution, adding that the council already took action to apply to the grant.
“I just would be concerned with risking downsizing something in a year or two that still costs us a ton of money, we don’t even build out the infrastructure for it entirely, and then we’re screwed in a future budget because now we’re having to invest more to expand this project,” he said.
Vice Mayor Hoque said the city council needs to be mindful about the timing and scale of additional investments, like the program, explaining how the council just asked their department heads to scale back on spending.
Both Hoque and Franco suggested that the council develop a funding strategy, such as a sustainability fund, to better plan for proposals switching the city’s fleet to electric vehicles.
Hoque said city officials should plan for such spending in the budget ahead of time.
“These are significant investments and they need to be incorporated into our budget planning rather than continuing to come forward as individual, unfunded expenditures.”
Sara Leon is a Voice of OC reporting fellow. You can reach her at admin@voiceofoc.org
