Lodi's Fuel Tax Is Shrinking. Can EVs Replace It?
Lodi's Fuel Tax Is Shrinking. Can EVs Replace It?
LodiEye — April 2026
Summary
Three new fuel retail projects are moving through approvals in the Lodi region. One — the Maverik station being annexed at Kettleman Lane and Beckman Road — will pay into Lodi's General Fund. Two — the Dhanda project at Highway 99 and Liberty Road in unincorporated Collierville, and the Lockeford ExtraMile at Highway 12 and Highway 88 — will not. Near-term, the Maverik adds roughly $280,000 annually to Lodi's books; the two unincorporated projects migrate approximately $340,000 annually from Lodi's tax base to San Joaquin County's as Lodi residents and pass-through traffic fuel up outside the city limits.
But the larger story is structural. California's Advanced Clean Cars II rule phases out new gasoline vehicle sales by 2035; Lodi's own EV Master Plan projects the city's zero-emission fleet will grow from 1,221 vehicles at the end of 2023 to more than 24,000 by 2035. Sustained California retail gasoline prices at $5.88 per gallon and rising accelerate the transition further. Meanwhile, Lodi Electric Utility's existing 10 percent payment-in-lieu-of-taxes transfer — approximately $7 million annually to the General Fund — provides a partial offsetting mechanism that is not widely understood, and whose optimization has not been publicly discussed. This analysis examines the near-term fiscal picture, the structural decline, and the replacement revenue and EV-monetization strategies Lodi can learn from peer California municipal utilities.
The Fiscal Geography
A city's tax base is a geographic fact before it is a financial one. California sales tax follows the cash register: every taxable dollar of fuel sold inside Lodi city limits sends roughly 1.5 cents back to the General Fund and Measure L; every dollar sold outside sends zero. That's the frame for the three new fuel projects, but it is the smaller story in this analysis. Two larger facts drive what comes next. First, Lodi's existing fuel retail footprint already exceeds current demand, and three new projects will add capacity to a market that is contracting. Second, California's regulated phase-out of gasoline vehicle sales by 2035 means the fuel tax base itself is shrinking under state policy, while the offsetting revenue from electric vehicle charging is governed by an entirely different set of fiscal rules — most of which Lodi's current public conversation hasn't engaged with yet.
Annual Local Sales Tax by Project and Recipient (mature year)
Source: LodiEye scenario modeling based on Maverik Lodi CEQA documents, San Joaquin County referral documents, and industry-standard station throughput benchmarks. Assumes $4.50/gallon retail price base case; current prices running higher.
Maverik: Inside the Boundary
The Maverik parcel at Kettleman and Beckman sat inside Lodi's Sphere of Influence, on the eastern edge of the incorporated city. When FJ Management (Maverik's parent) filed for approval, they requested annexation. The Planning Commission approved in June 2025; Council approved unanimously on July 16, 2025. Starting the day the station opens, every taxable gallon and every c-store purchase generates Lodi tax revenue — approximately $280,000 annually at mature volumes, split between the Bradley-Burns General Fund share and Measure L. That's enough to fund roughly two police officer FTEs, or 1.5 firefighters once the Measure L overtime allocation is applied.
Dhanda and Lockeford: The Corridor Leak
The two unincorporated projects generate no revenue for Lodi. The Dhanda project at Highway 99 and Liberty Road — five miles north of the city, in the unincorporated community of Collierville — was rezoned from Rural Residential to Freeway Commercial by the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors on November 12, 2024 by a 3-0 vote, with Supervisors Ding and Rickman recused. At mature volumes the project will generate approximately $220,000 annually in local sales tax, all of it flowing to the San Joaquin County General Fund and the countywide Local Transportation Fund. The ExtraMile planned for Highway 12 and Highway 88 in Lockeford, roughly eight miles east of Lodi, is currently in the County's Planning Commission review. At mature volumes, roughly $120,000 annually to the County.
Some fraction of that combined $340,000 per year represents spending that would otherwise have occurred at Lodi city stations along Kettleman, Cherokee, and Victor roads. How much is an empirical question — it requires station-level volume data the city does not currently publish and that was not available for this analysis — but the direction is clear. Lodi residents who commute north on Highway 99 or east toward the Sierra will be able to top off their tanks without entering Lodi city limits. Some share of the displaced revenue is genuinely lost to Lodi's tax base, not merely relocated within it.
That's the corridor leak. It is real, it is permanent, and over twenty years in nominal dollars it is roughly $6.8 million of Lodi-resident spending flowing to the County rather than the city. It is also, as the following sections show, not the largest fiscal issue in this story.
The Bigger Shift
California's Advanced Clean Cars II rule phases out new gasoline vehicle sales by 2035. Lodi's own EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan, adopted in October 2025, projects the city's light-duty EV fleet will grow from 1,221 at the end of 2023 to more than 24,000 by 2035 — roughly twenty times larger than today. By the mid-2030s, the fuel-sourced portion of Lodi's combined sales tax and Measure L revenue declines by approximately 40 to 45 percent relative to the current base.
In today's dollars, that is roughly $1 million per year of structural erosion by 2035, compounding further through 2050 as the state's used-vehicle fleet turns over. Every one of the three projects in this analysis — Maverik included — is operating on a fuel retail model whose tax base will shrink substantially over the life of the improvements they're building. The Maverik contribution to Lodi's General Fund, estimated at $280,000 at mature gasoline-era volumes, will erode alongside the rest of the city's fuel tax receipts as EV share grows.
This is not speculation or a modeling assumption. It is the state's adopted regulatory policy, and it has been in the city's own infrastructure planning documents for five years. It dwarfs the corridor leak by roughly an order of magnitude.
The Price Accelerant
One variable compresses that timeline. California's gasoline prices are running at $5.88 per gallon as of mid-April 2026 per AAA, 21 percent above a year ago and $1.77 above the national average. The Phillips 66 Wilmington refinery closed in late 2025, the Valero Benicia refinery is closing this month, and UC Davis economists project the combined capacity loss adds approximately $1.21 per gallon once fully realized around August. Central-case projections for the remainder of 2026 range from $5.50 to $6.50 per gallon statewide; the USC Marshall School's worst-case projection reaches $7.35 to $8.44. (A separate LodiEye analysis at lodi411.com/lodi-eye/california-fuel-price-projections-amp-analysis-2026 walks through the refinery closure timing and scenario modeling in more detail.) Whatever the precise endpoint, "high prices for the remainder of the year" is not a question of whether, but how high.
This matters for Lodi's fiscal picture in two directions that partially offset each other, one near-term and one longer-term. In the near term, higher retail prices produce a local sales tax revenue windfall because California's local Bradley-Burns and Measure L taxes apply as a percentage of the retail price minus excise taxes — a roughly 62 percent per-gallon revenue increase as prices move from $4.00 to $6.00, and a 125 percent increase at $8.00.
Lodi Per-Gallon Local Tax Revenue vs. Retail Gas Price
Source: LodiEye modeling based on California Department of Tax and Fee Administration Bradley-Burns rules. Combined local rate of 1.5% (1.0% Bradley-Burns plus 0.5% Measure L) applied to retail price net of federal excise ($0.184), state excise ($0.612), and Underground Storage Tank fee ($0.02).
Short-run consumption declines modestly in response (typically 5 to 15 percent against a 50 percent price increase), so the net effect on revenue per existing station is meaningfully positive. The revenue estimates elsewhere in this analysis used a base case of $4.50 per gallon. At sustained prices in the $6.00 range, the actual near-term numbers are likely 40 to 55 percent higher per station — meaning Maverik's contribution to Lodi could run closer to $400,000 annually in its opening years, and the corridor migration to San Joaquin County closer to $500,000. These are short-term effects, not structural changes.
In the longer term, sustained high prices accelerate the EV transition that is already underway. A Lodi resident driving 12,000 miles per year at 25 miles per gallon spends roughly $2,880 annually on gasoline at $6.00 per gallon — against approximately $500 to $650 charging an equivalent EV at LEU's residential rates. That's a $2,200-plus annual savings, substantially improving the payback math on a new or used EV purchase. Empirical research from the International Council on Clean Transportation and UC Davis consistently shows that sustained $1-per-gallon increases correlate with 2 to 4 percentage point acceleration in EV share of new vehicle sales over two to three years. Applied to Lodi, sustained $5.50–$7.00 prices likely pull the city's EV Master Plan adoption curve forward by one to three years — meaning the 43 percent zero-emission fleet share projected for 2035 arrives in 2032 or 2033 instead.
The combined effect runs in opposite directions on different time horizons. Near-term (2026–2027), the fuel tax base is up, not down — Measure L and the General Fund benefit from a temporary price windfall. Medium-term (2028–2032), accelerated EV adoption bites into consumption faster than baseline projections, and the structural decline in fuel-sourced sales tax arrives earlier than the current scenarios assume. Long-term (post-2033), the trajectory converges on the same endpoint, just sooner. The practical implication is that the window for putting replacement revenue instruments in place is shorter than the five-year structural deficit projections currently suggest. Every year of the near-term price windfall is a year that should be used to prepare for the accelerated decline that follows it.
Building Yesterday's Infrastructure
Set against that structural decline, the three new fuel projects raise a question the approval processes have not directly addressed: is there unmet demand for additional gas and diesel retail capacity in the Lodi region in the first place?
The honest answer, based on publicly available industry data, is no. The California Energy Commission's retail fuel outlet data shows statewide gasoline station count declining roughly one percent per year, and statewide gasoline consumption declining by roughly two percent per year since its 2018 peak. Lodi's existing fuel retail footprint — approximately fourteen stations inside the city limits plus another four to five unincorporated stations within ten miles — already serves a light-duty vehicle population (approximately 56,000 registered vehicles in Lodi) whose fuel consumption is on a gradual downward trajectory. The industry-benchmark throughput for an average U.S. gas station is roughly three thousand gallons per day, or about one million gallons per year. Higher-volume freeway-adjacent formats like the ones being proposed operate at three to five million gallons per year. Adding the three new projects brings roughly nine million gallons of additional mature-year capacity into a regional market that is shrinking.
That mismatch isn't unique to Lodi. California's gas station operators have been building high-throughput freeway-service sites while closing lower-volume neighborhood stations — a consolidation pattern where capacity shifts but aggregate demand falls. The closures of the Kettleman/Hutchins and Lodi Ave/Cherokee Arco stations around 2020, both of which now sit idle under BP deed restrictions preventing rebuild as gas stations, are a local illustration of how this plays out at the neighborhood level. For the three new projects, the commercial logic is not that Lodi needs more fuel capacity — it is that the operators want to capture demand from existing stations through a newer format, a more visible location, and in some cases a lower cost structure.
The practical implication for fiscal planning is straightforward: some fraction of the volume at Maverik, Dhanda, and Lockeford will not be new, incremental consumption. It will be displaced from existing Lodi city stations. That displacement is what the fiscal modeling calls "cannibalization," and it reduces the net revenue impact of the Maverik annexation meaningfully. It also, in the longer term, accelerates the closure of marginal existing stations that cannot compete on throughput.
What Replaces the Revenue
Lodi is already looking at a projected $4.8 million five-year structural deficit. The fuel tax erosion is largely ahead of it. The conversation about how to close both gaps — the current structural one and the emerging fuel-tax one — has been incremental so far. Several specific revenue options have been raised at the Council level or in staff analysis, and each is materially larger than any recoverable portion of the corridor leak:
- Sales tax increase from 8.25 percent to the California median of 8.75 percent. Estimated to generate approximately $8.7 million annually — more than twenty times the corridor leak and more than enough to cover both the current structural deficit and projected fuel-tax erosion through 2035. Requires voter approval under Proposition 218.
- Transient occupancy tax increase from the current 6 percent to 10 percent. Would generate an estimated $350,000 to $500,000 annually, captured almost entirely from out-of-town visitors. Only 15 California cities charge 6 percent TOT; 207 cities charge 10 percent. Voter approval required.
- Restored business license tax. Would recover roughly $2.2 million annually that was lost when the 1995 ordinance was invalidated under Proposition 218 in 2023–24. Voter approval required.
- Parcel tax for specific services. Would require two-thirds voter approval but could directly fund police, fire, or parks if Measure L's fuel-sourced revenue erodes.
Annual Revenue Potential: Replacement Options vs. Corridor Leak
Source: City of Lodi budget documents, Proposition 218 Citizens Committee reports, League of California Cities TOT data. Orange bar shows current corridor leak. Green bars show voter-approved revenue options under consideration. Scale is in millions of dollars annually.
None of these is politically easy, and each takes time to bring to the ballot. But every one is materially larger than any recoverable portion of what the Dhanda and Lockeford projects will route to San Joaquin County. The scale difference matters: a modest success on a sales tax measure is worth dozens of successful fuel-project captures.
What Lodi Can Learn From Other Cities: Monetizing EV Growth
EV charging infrastructure is often framed in climate terms — how fast it deploys, how equitably it distributes, how it integrates with the grid. The fiscal framing is newer and less well developed, but it matters enormously as the gasoline tax base erodes. The practical question Lodi faces is this: as EV and plug-in hybrid ownership in the city grows from 1,221 vehicles to more than 24,000 by 2035, what mechanisms route the resulting economic activity into the General Fund and Measure L, and what mechanisms keep it outside?
The mechanism Lodi already has
Every California city that operates its own electric utility has an existing tool for capturing a share of utility revenue for the General Fund: the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes, or PILOT. Lodi Electric Utility transfers approximately ten percent of its roughly $100 million annual revenue — about $7 million per year — to the city's General Fund through this structure. The money helps fund police, fire, parks, and other city services alongside Measure L and the general sales tax. The legal foundation is settled: the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the PILOT approach in the 2018 Citizens for Fair REU Rates v. City of Redding decision, with the court holding that utility-to-general-fund transfers are neither a tax nor a Proposition 218 violation so long as the underlying utility rates don't exceed the reasonable cost of service.
This matters for the EV question because it means a large portion of any growth in LEU's retail revenue — including revenue from residential home charging and from commercial charging stations billed at LEU's rates — automatically flows through to the General Fund at the 10 percent PILOT ratio, without requiring a new ordinance, a ballot measure, or a council vote. As the Lodi EV fleet grows, LEU's residential and commercial load will grow with it. An average battery-electric vehicle consumes roughly three to four thousand kilowatt-hours per year for home charging, generating approximately $450 to $600 in LEU retail revenue per vehicle at residential rates. At 24,000 vehicles by 2035, the incremental revenue to LEU from EV charging alone is on the order of $10 to $15 million per year above today's baseline, of which roughly $1 to $1.5 million per year would flow to the General Fund via the existing PILOT. These are modeled estimates rather than audited figures, and actual numbers depend on rate structure, charging behavior, and the pace of EV adoption — but the order of magnitude is roughly comparable to the gasoline sales tax base that will be displaced over the same period.
That's the good news. The harder news is that capturing the full opportunity requires a more deliberate strategy than passive flow-through.
The three distinct revenue streams
EV charging revenue behaves differently depending on which of three streams it flows through, and conflating them has been most of the confusion in city-level discussions of this topic across California.
The first stream is direct utility rate revenue — every kilowatt-hour delivered to an EV on an LEU-billed meter, whether at home, at a business, or at a public charger LEU operates. This revenue is subject to the existing 10 percent PILOT and flows to the General Fund automatically. It grows proportionally with EV adoption. The policy lever here is the PILOT percentage itself: LADWP transfers 8 percent of its revenue, Riverside up to 11.5 percent of electric and water profits, Redding a formula-based equivalent. A change to Lodi's 10 percent rate is a Council decision, not a ballot measure, and is legally protected as long as LEU's underlying rates don't exceed reasonable cost of service.
The second stream is Low Carbon Fuel Standard credits. Separately from rate revenue, every kilowatt-hour delivered to an EV in California generates LCFS credits, which electric utilities can sell to regulated fossil-fuel obligated parties. Credit prices have been volatile — averaging approximately $58 per metric ton in 2025 year-to-date, down from peaks near $200 per ton in 2020 through 2022. Crucially, LCFS credit proceeds are legally restricted under California Air Resources Board regulation: they must be used to benefit current or future EV drivers. They cannot flow into the General Fund or Measure L. They can fund public charging infrastructure, customer rebates, low-income EV adoption programs, and EV-related education. The 2024 LCFS amendments require 75 percent of utility "holdback" credit revenue to support programs in disadvantaged, low-income, or rural communities. For Lodi, LCFS credit revenue is not a General Fund substitute — but it can substantially offset the capital cost of public charging infrastructure that would otherwise compete with other utility or city investments.
The third stream is non-utility revenue from real estate and right-of-way access. This includes site lease fees for third-party charging operators on city-owned parking lots, franchise fees for chargers in the public right-of-way, and revenue-share arrangements with private operators who site chargers on city property. These revenues are independent of LEU and flow directly to the General Fund or to specific enterprise funds depending on how they are structured. They are the primary tool available to California cities without municipal utilities, and they matter for Lodi precisely because not every future public charger needs to be owned and operated by LEU.
What LEU already does with LCFS
LEU does participate in LCFS credit generation and deploys the proceeds through an active rebate program. The posted menu as of April 2026 includes residential EV charger rebates of $500 standard and $750 for income-qualified households, with matching amounts for installation costs. Commercial Level 2 chargers receive $3,000 rebates for both equipment and installation, while commercial and multi-family DC fast chargers receive $4,000 each for equipment and installation. On the vehicle side, LEU offers $1,000 for new or used zero-emission vehicle purchases — $3,500 for income-qualified buyers — and a parallel $1,000 commercial ZEV rebate limited to one per business every five years (no leases, no hybrids). When stacked with available state and federal incentives, total EV-related rebates available to a Lodi household can reach roughly $20,000. Prospective applicants should note that LEU's formal rebate Terms and Conditions PDF still cites older caps tied to the dedicated EV-charging meter rate; the current web-posted rebate schedule is the governing version.
That's the deployment side. The harder part to evaluate is the revenue side. LEU does not publish a standalone LCFS credit-balance figure on its public website. The FY 2025 draft Electric Distribution budget reports total fund cash balances projected at approximately $1.03 million at the end of 2025, rising to roughly $1.11 million by 2030, but the LCFS sub-account is not broken out separately in that summary. Without that visibility, it is difficult for the Council, the public, or LEU's ratepayers to evaluate whether annual rebate spending matches annual credit revenue, or whether unspent balances are accumulating that could be deployed for broader infrastructure investment alongside the existing rebate menu.
Two external factors are likely to increase LEU's LCFS revenue substantially from here. First, the statewide LCFS market shifted into quarterly deficits in the third quarter of 2025 — 8.33 million metric tons of credits generated against 10.04 million metric tons of deficits, per CARB's quarterly summary — a pattern that tends to push credit prices and therefore utility EV-program revenue back up after several years of decline. Second, CARB's 2024 LCFS amendments took effect July 1, 2025, introducing four new Fast Charging Infrastructure crediting pathways (for light- and medium-duty electricity, heavy-duty electricity, and two hydrogen mirrors), 10-year credit life, and combined capacity-plus-consumption crediting at 20 percent utilization factors for public or shared chargers and 10 percent for private chargers. The International Council on Clean Transportation models dispensed-electricity LCFS value at roughly $0.10 per kilowatt-hour under a central-price scenario, which is the benchmark LEU's revenue will track as more Lodi chargers come online. Those changes materially expand the pool of LCFS revenue LEU can direct into its rebate program and into charging infrastructure, particularly for DC fast charging and fleet applications tied to the city's Zero-Emissions Bus Study and Fleet Electrification Master Plan.
Three peer-city models
Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is the closest large California peer to LEU and offers the most developed working model. SMUD opted into LCFS credit generation early and has publicly committed to reinvesting all LCFS proceeds into additional EV infrastructure. Its most instructive strategic move is using LCFS revenue as capital leverage — SMUD partnered with the California Energy Commission on a $15.5 million CALeVIP rebate program (with SMUD contributing $1.5 million alongside $14 million in CEC funding), then secured an $11.63 million federal Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant in January 2025 to build nine corridor charging stations. The pattern SMUD demonstrates is that utility LCFS revenue is most valuable not as a line item but as a match — it unlocks federal and state co-funding that would otherwise require ratepayer or General Fund capital. The resulting charging infrastructure then generates retail revenue that flows through to the General Fund via PILOT. LEU's access to this model is theoretically identical to SMUD's. LEU's LCFS proceeds currently flow primarily into the customer rebate program documented in the preceding section rather than being deployed as match capital for larger co-funded infrastructure projects. Whether a SMUD-style leverage strategy is being considered at LEU is not evident from public materials.
Palo Alto's CPAU is the transparency peer. As a self-described "medium publicly-owned utility" similar in scale to LEU, CPAU has reported LCFS revenue publicly through its Utilities Advisory Commission since 2016. In 2019, CPAU documented approximately $1.5 million per year in LCFS revenue from roughly 4,000 registered EVs in its service area — with credit prices that were substantially higher than today's. At current prices, the same fleet would generate proportionally less. CPAU deploys its LCFS revenue through a rebate program offering up to $8,000 per port for schools, nonprofits, and multifamily properties, targeting segments where market financing of public chargers is weakest. LEU's rebate menu is comparable in structure, if differently calibrated, and the deployment pattern is broadly similar. The gap is in reporting: CPAU publishes credits generated, revenue received, funds deployed by program, and unspent balance annually; LEU does not currently publish equivalent disclosure. Replicating CPAU's reporting practice — likely as a supplement to the Electric Distribution Fund budget — would give the Council and the public the visibility to evaluate whether LEU's program is operating at its potential as credit prices recover and the 2024 LCFS amendments take effect.
Alameda Municipal Power demonstrates the non-utility model. AMP is slightly larger than LEU (roughly 38,000 customers versus 27,400) but has moved aggressively on curbside and multifamily charging through a partnership with "It's Electric," a Brooklyn-based company, announced in September 2025. The model installs curbside Level 2 chargers powered directly from adjacent building meters rather than requiring separate utility service drops. The private operator finances the infrastructure, captures the LCFS credits, and shares revenue with the property owner and the city. Alameda's role is as land-use partner rather than capital provider. For low-density residential neighborhoods in Lodi where utility-owned curbside charging would be cost-prohibitive — and where home charging is impractical for renters and residents of multifamily buildings without dedicated parking — the partnership model is likely the only viable path to broad charging access. It also generates non-utility revenue streams (ground lease, revenue share, franchise-type fees) that flow directly to the General Fund without passing through the PILOT.
The open questions for Lodi
Translating these peer-city lessons into Lodi policy requires answering four specific questions, none of which have been publicly addressed by the current Council or staff reports that are available online. They are, in order of fiscal significance:
One. Is the existing 10 percent PILOT rate the right rate going forward? The percentage is a Council policy choice, not a legal requirement. As LEU's revenue grows with EV load — revenue that directly substitutes for displaced gasoline consumption — there is a reasonable argument that the PILOT percentage should move with it. A one-percentage-point increase, from 10 percent to 11 percent, would add approximately $700,000 annually to the General Fund at current LEU revenue and would grow proportionally with the utility. That is a real number on the order of a police sergeant and two patrol officers, annually. It is also politically visible because it affects utility rates indirectly through the cost-of-service test, and the analysis should be transparent.
Two. What are LEU's annual LCFS credit balance, revenue, and deployment — in a publicly transparent format? LEU participates in LCFS credit generation and deploys the proceeds through the rebate program documented above. But the annual credit revenue, the year-end credit balance, and the ratio of revenue to rebate deployment are not broken out in the utility's public budget materials. SMUD and CPAU publish these figures; LEU does not. Annual disclosure — likely as a supplement to the Electric Distribution Fund budget or as part of the Utilities Advisory Committee's work — would let the Council and the public evaluate whether the program is operating at its potential as credit prices recover under the 2024 LCFS amendments. The related strategic question is whether LEU should expand beyond the rebate-only deployment pattern and use LCFS revenue as match capital for co-funded infrastructure projects (the SMUD model), which at the scale of CALeVIP partnerships and federal CFI grants could leverage LEU's contribution by factors of six to ten over the life of the EV Master Plan.
Three. What operating model will Lodi use for public charging at city-owned properties? The EV Master Plan identifies 23 sites, with $33.6 million of total capital investment through 2035. Each site could be LEU-owned and operated (maximum rate revenue, maximum capital exposure), third-party operated with LEU as electricity wholesaler (moderate rate revenue, no capital exposure), or curbside partnership with building power (no rate revenue, small site lease or franchise revenue). The Master Plan does not resolve this choice; the Council still has to make it. Different sites likely merit different models. Making the decision deliberately, in public, is different from letting it default.
Four. Should Lodi adopt an EV charging ordinance that establishes franchise or site-lease fees for third-party chargers in the public right-of-way or on city-owned land? California cities with such ordinances are still relatively few — San Francisco, West Hollywood, and a handful of others have adopted partial frameworks — but the number is growing. An ordinance adopted now, before third-party chargers proliferate in Lodi, is materially easier than retrofitting one later over the objections of operators who have already invested in the existing regulatory vacuum.
The larger point is that EV charging is not a hypothetical future issue for Lodi's fiscal architecture. Lodi's EV fleet is doubling every three to four years, LEU's EV Master Plan is an adopted document, and the gasoline tax base is declining annually. The design choices that determine how EV-related economic activity lands in the city's fiscal architecture are being made — or defaulted into — right now. Making them deliberately, with reference to peer-city models and public reporting, is the conversation that should be occupying Council agenda time in the months ahead.
The Policy Question
For the Council and the Interim City Manager heading into FY 2026–27 budget planning, the frame is this: the market is adding fuel retail capacity to a region whose demand is already contracting and will contract further under state policy. The Maverik project adds a modest near-term positive to Lodi's books. The Dhanda and Lockeford projects together represent roughly $340,000 per year of local sales tax revenue migrating from Lodi's tax base to San Joaquin County's, as Lodi residents and pass-through traffic fuel up at unincorporated stations rather than at Lodi city stations. All three projects will generate materially less tax revenue by 2035 than they will in their opening years, because the underlying consumption base is declining.
The corridor projects are a warning flare about the larger decline, not the main event. The real policy work is on three fronts. First, replacement revenue on a scale that meaningfully addresses both the current $4.8 million structural deficit and the emerging fuel-tax erosion — sales tax to the California median, transient occupancy tax to the California median, business license tax restoration, or some combination. Second, a deliberate optimization of the existing LEU PILOT mechanism and LCFS participation to capture the maximum fiscal flow-through from the EV transition. Third, explicit decisions about operating models for public charging on city-owned sites and about franchise arrangements for third-party chargers in the public right-of-way. None of those three conversations has begun in any substantive public way in Lodi. The FY 2026–27 budget cycle is the place for them to start.
The next Council inherits a structural deficit, a fuel tax base that erodes from here, and an EV transition that represents both the largest fiscal threat to the current revenue model and — handled deliberately — the largest offsetting opportunity. Whether they also inherit a serious plan for that transition is a choice the current Council makes in the eight months between now and the FY 2026–27 budget adoption.
This LodiEye analysis was produced using artificial intelligence tools under the direction and editorial review of Lodi411's human editor. Lodi411 uses multiple AI platforms in its research and publication workflow, including Anthropic's Claude (primarily Opus and Sonnet models) and Perplexity AI across a variety of large language models offered by each. These tools were used in the following capacities:
Source Discovery: AI-assisted search identified over forty publicly available sources across California regulatory agencies (CDTFA, CARB, CEC, CPUC), peer California municipal utilities (SMUD, City of Palo Alto Utilities, Alameda Municipal Power, Redding Electric Utility), the California Supreme Court, Lodi's own planning and budget documents, industry trade publications, and academic research institutions (UC Davis Institute for Transportation Studies, USC Marshall School, International Council on Clean Transportation). Perplexity AI was used for real-time retrieval of current California gasoline prices, LCFS credit pricing, and peer-utility EV program disclosures. Claude Opus was used for deeper analysis of CEQA environmental documents, the Maverik Lodi Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration, the Lodi EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan, and the 2018 Citizens for Fair REU Rates v. City of Redding decision.
Credibility Validation: AI cross-referenced fiscal claims across multiple independent sources, prioritizing primary government datasets (California Energy Commission fuel price breakdowns, CARB quarterly LCFS summaries, CDTFA Bradley-Burns allocation data), institutional analysis (UC Davis and USC Marshall scenario modeling), peer-utility published reports (CPAU Utilities Advisory Commission memoranda, SMUD commercial EV program documentation, AMP rebate disclosures), and news reporting. Multiple AI models independently verified the 10 percent PILOT transfer mechanism, the approximately $7 million annual transfer figure, and the California Supreme Court ruling in Redding. Fiscal projections were validated against published scenario modeling from UC Davis economists.
Analysis and Synthesis: Claude Opus and Sonnet assisted in constructing the three-revenue-stream framework (utility rate revenue, LCFS credits, non-utility real estate and right-of-way), the price-accelerant dual-horizon analysis (near-term per-gallon revenue windfall versus medium-term EV adoption acceleration), and the peer-city comparative framework (SMUD leverage model, CPAU transparency model, AMP partnership model). AI assisted in developing the per-gallon tax revenue scaling model across retail price points and the modeled estimates for LEU's incremental revenue from EV adoption through 2035.
Presentation: Claude assisted in drafting, structuring, and formatting the report for clarity and readability, including the narrative arc from project-level facts through structural fuel tax decline to forward-looking policy options, the three Kendo UI chart data visualizations, and the three-horizon time frame for evaluating fiscal impacts (near-term, medium-term, long-term).
Final Review: Multiple AI models reviewed the completed draft for factual consistency, source attribution accuracy, logical coherence, and balanced presentation of competing fiscal dynamics — near-term price windfall versus structural decline, corridor leak versus replacement revenue options, and LEU's existing PILOT mechanism versus strategic questions about its optimization. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions were made by Lodi411's human editor.
Lodi411/LodiEye believes transparency about AI use in journalism serves both readers and the profession. We use multiple AI platforms — including Anthropic's Claude (Opus and Sonnet) and Perplexity AI — as research, analysis, and presentation tools, not as autonomous authors. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions are made by Lodi411's human editor, who directs and reviews all AI-assisted work.
References
- City of Lodi — Lodi Electric Utility
- Lodi Electric Utility — About Us (documents 10% PILOT / $7M annual transfer)
- Lodi EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan
- LEU EV Charger and Installation Rebates
- Lodi Maverik Project Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration (Kimley-Horn, April 2025)
- California Energy Commission — Estimated Gasoline Price Breakdown and Margins
- CEC — California Retail Fuel Outlet Annual Reporting (CEC-A15)
- CARB — LCFS Electricity and Hydrogen Provisions
- CPUC — Low-Carbon Fuel Standard
- Sacramento Municipal Utility District — Electric Vehicles Program
- CALeVIP — Sacramento County Incentive Project (SMUD partnership)
- City of Palo Alto Utilities — EV FAQs and Charging Programs
- Alameda Municipal Power — Electric Vehicles
- It's Electric and City of Alameda Curbside Charging Partnership (Sept 2025)
- Northern California Power Agency — Lodi Electric Utility Profile
- Citizens for Fair REU Rates v. City of Redding, 4 Cal. 5th 1124 (2018) — Case summary
- Stillwater Publications — LCFS Credit Price Reporting (2025)
- LodiEye — California Fuel Price Projections & Analysis 2026 (companion analysis)