Cobleskill Decommissions EV Ports

By Joshua Walthe

COBLESKILL - On Tuesday evening, the Cobleskill Village Board met to discuss renewing the contract for the electric vehicle charging ports in the Union Street parking lot.

Mayor Rebecca Stanton-Terk first brought the Board up to speed about the charging ports, explaining that they previously entered into a three year contract to bring the first publicly available EV ports to the Village.

The original idea was to set up EV infrastructure not only for the local residents but also have the parking lot act as a stop for tourists to charge their cars while they brought business to Cobleskill’s shops.

Unfortunately, recent data by the town clerk has shown that they aren’t being used nearly as much as the Board first expected.

According to a usage pie graph, the EV ports are not being used 99% of the time. All the while, the ports are still draining power from the Village’s electric bill.

Although the Village owns the physical charging ports, the contract to use their software expires in one month, and so the Board opened discussion about what they should do.

Member Larry VanHeertum was the first to speak, putting forth a motion to “dump” the contract and auction the charging ports to someone with electric vehicles.

However, this was quickly stopped by member Howard Burt, who said that he originally wanted to look into a one year contract to see if usage would increase.

But after hearing that a one year contract combined with the power drain would cost the Village an estimated $2,400, Mr. Burt offered to not sign the contract but keep the machines in place for possible reactivation at a later point.

“Electric vehicles are just not ready yet,” said Mr. Burt.

With the rest of the Board in agreement, they passed the revised motion, thereby bringing the charging ports out of service for the foreseeable future.