His resignation comes as the town of North Elba and state Olympic Regional Development Authority work on creating a new version of a long-expired operational agreement, which authorizes ORDA to operate the town-owned Olympic venues. Despite the expired agreement, the town has continued to pay ORDA the annual sum that the agreement requires. From 2005 to 2023, this amounted to $12.6 million in public funds and an additional $1.95 million in state grant money.

As town and ORDA officials hash out the details of a new agreement, Erenstone is raising concerns about the future of the town’s financial contributions to ORDA. He’s also accusing the town and ORDA of “backroom” dealings and Open Meetings Law violations while calling for better transparency and public involvement in the process. Erenstone cited ongoing conflict with North Elba town Supervisor Derek Doty over these “backroom” negotiations and disagreements with Doty over the scope and power of the LPSC as reasons for his resignation.

The LPSC was created in the 1920s to run the North Elba Park District, which manages day-to-day operations of all of the town-owned recreational facilities, such as the Craig Wood Golf Course, the North Elba Show Grounds and the Lake Placid Toboggan Chute. The LPSC also has the power to appoint a majority of members to a Community Advisory Panel, or CAP. CAP was created by state law to provide feedback to ORDA, but the panel went defunct in 2016.

Erenstone is pushing for CAP to be reinstated, which he hopes would effectively add an extra layer of local input on ORDA operations.

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LPSC and the CAP

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The LPSC was created in 1928, along with the North Elba Park District. Consisting of five “resident taxpayers,” the LPSC was active for 70 years until about 1998, when it went defunct.

The law that created the LPSC and the North Elba Park District — chapter 477 of the 1928 Laws of New York — says that the LPSC, under the town council’s supervision, has “full charge” of the park district, including appointing and compensating its employees. It was also responsible for submitting an estimated park district budget to the town council annually. This estimated budget would help the town council plan its budget and the next year’s tax levy, meaning the amount of money the town would collect from taxpayers.

In 1981, when ORDA was created, the LPSC was given another responsibility: The authority to appoint a majority to ORDA’s Community Advisory Panel, or CAP.

ORDA was created to manage the venues created or improved for the 1980 Olympic Winter Games. The law that created ORDA is the Public Authorities law, Chapter 43-A, Article 8, Title 28. It can be viewed at tinyurl.com/2fh93hyb.

The law says that a 19-member CAP should be created to consult with ORDA, advising and assisting it in its duties. The LPSC has the authority to appoint 10 of the CAP’s members.

The CAP went defunct around the same time as the LPSC. It was brought back in 2014, but dissolved again in 2016.

Erenstone sat on that recent iteration of the CAP. He said that mid-level staff at ORDA resisted the panel’s efforts, even after ORDA administration softened to the CAP’s feedback.

“(There was) constant, kind of, resistance of ORDA mid-level staff in having us, a bunch of volunteers, do our job — which was to review their operations and give feedback,” he said.

Then-CAP chairman Jim Goff resigned in 2016. Erenstone said nobody else on the CAP was willing to take on the chairman role, and the CAP “phased out” soon after.

Goff could not be reached by press time.

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LPSC returns

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Erenstone approached Doty about resurrecting the LPSC in 2022. Erenstone said that his goal was to restore that layer of oversight over ORDA using structures already in state law. Doty said that his understanding of the LPSC was that it was meant to be an organization concerned with volunteerism, not oversight.

“One of the things (Erenstone) guaranteed me … was to rally the troops and get a band of volunteers,” Doty said. “He left that idea very early on and never followed through with it.”

Doty agreed to bring back the LPSC. Five people were appointed to the council: chairman Erenstone, town Councilor Rick Preston, village Trustee Marc Galvin, Bryan Magnus and Tatyana Reinboldt. The new bylaws were adopted in May 2023.

According to the new bylaws, the purpose of the LPSC is to “initiate, plan, coordinate, review and conduct wherever necessary” sports programs and events in the town of North Elba. This includes the authority to appoint a majority to the CAP once it was reestablished.

Erenstone said that, since the bylaws were adopted, he feels that Doty “marginalized” him and kept the LPSC out of decision-making processes regarding the town’s new agreement with ORDA. Erenstone said the LPSC should have a role in talks about the new agreement, as they’re the “resident taxpayers” designated to participate in the town’s business with ORDA.

“If you’re using someone’s property, they tend to have oversight over you,” he said. “The public should help advise.”

Doty disagreed that the LPSC needed to be looped in at the current stage of negotiating the new agreement. He said Erenstone thinks of himself as having powers over the town board.

“He is relying on old law to think that he is in a position of authority that he is not, and I had that confirmed with legal counsel,” Doty said. “I feel sorry that the relationship fell apart, but he’s looking to have a role that he’s not actually allowed.”

Though the laws were written a while ago, they are still current. When asked if the role was still technically allowed by current law, Doty said that the CAP and LPSC “haven’t been used in years.”

“That’s great that they’re in the law, but I’m not bending on this because there is nothing good to come out of the direction that Jeff wants to grind an axe with ORDA. I’m not going to jeopardize very good relations because he feels that he’s king of the castle.”

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LPSC scope

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Erenstone said the LPSC has mandated oversight over ORDA and the town’s payments to ORDA — which have totaled more than $12.6 million since 2005 — but it hasn’t been granted the full scope of its powers.

“ORDA has forgotten and the town hasn’t really enforced it,” he said.

In a message provided by ORDA Communications Director Darcy Norfolk, ORDA General Counsel Michelle Crew wrote that the purpose of the ORDA budget review process is “to enable the district to have the information about the Olympic Authority’s budget as it pertains to the district’s overall budget so that the district can determine whether to continue paying the Olympic Authority every year.”

Title 28, the law that created ORDA, says the park district may end its agreement with ORDA if the park district doesn’t approve the operational budget of the authority or if the state doesn’t provide the funding to ORDA that it’s required to. The park district is supposed to be run by the LPSC, with supervision from the town council, according to the Laws of 1928. This means that the law gives the LPSC input regarding the town’s payments to ORDA.

Erenstone said he suspects big investments from the state government — which have totaled more than half a billion dollars in the last decade alone — are a reason why the town council is cautious to give the LPSC input into the new agreement and its payments to ORDA.

“The reason I think (the payments are) not getting reined in is everyone’s happy with the millions and millions of dollars the governor is giving to ORDA and they don’t want to upset the gravy train,” he said.

Doty said that, for $500,000, North Elba already receives benefits — and he plans to bargain for more. He sees North Elba’s three appointees to the ORDA Board of Directors as a benefit resulting from the agreement and said the “overall economic impact” of ORDA is invaluable to the community.

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CAP scope

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Erenstone and Doty disagreed over the duties of the CAP, too. Erenstone said his goal in bringing back the LPSC was to eventually reinstate the CAP, whose purpose, in his view, was to provide feedback on ORDA’s operations from North Elba community members.

North Elba and ORDA envision a different role for the CAP.

“I don’t see (the CAP) holding responsibilities as attracting events because ORDA has become such an empire that attracting events is totally in their wheelhouse,” Doty said. “But, an advisory council could, in fact, be a communication aspect that helps, let’s say, potential problems or issues or even helping planning events.”

Doty said his vision of a community panel would involve “site-specific roles so that it was fewer people, not a cumbersome amount of people.” The law currently requires the CAP to have 19 members.

ORDA President and CEO Ashley Walden said that she also sees the CAP serving in a communications role.

“(It would be) a communication channel and that conduit, so that if there’s ever questions — if people are hearing things and they’re concerned about, whether it be an event or a construction project or something that’s happening at the venues — that there’s clear communication,” she said.

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Resignation

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Things came to a head between Doty and Erenstone when Doty allegedly removed Erenstone from the Feb. 13 meeting agenda, where Erenstone said he was planning to speak about bringing back the CAP.

Erenstone said he had discussed his perspective on the role of the CAP with Doty before and was planning on approaching the town council to get the ball rolling on re-instating the CAP.

“He had talked to me about reinstating it, and I said, ‘Until I know the structure of a reinstatement, we can’t do it, Jeff,'” Doty said. “He wanted to address this new lease and it did not apply to the (LPSC). We hadn’t even started the process yet. If, in fact, I did refuse his coming on the agenda, it had to do because it wasn’t applicable.”

Doty gave the go-ahead to the town’s legal counsel to begin working with ORDA’s lawyers on a new operational agreement on Feb. 1.

After being removed from the agenda, Erenstone decided to resign from the LPSC. He offered his letter of resignation at the next town council meeting on March 12, citing ongoing frustrations with the private nature of the renegotiation.

“I know that the negotiations were back in October of 2023 and I don’t believe anything has been on the public record about those negotiations to date,” he said at the meeting. “That does concern me a bit, that in some cases, negotiations have literally been done in a back room. I don’t think that serves the public well.”

Doty said that he still respects Erenstone but believes he’s misguided.

“I still have tremendous respect for Jeff,” he said. “I hope that in his sincerity and his wanting everything to be right, he can get to a point where he’s OK with our decision process, but he doesn’t have the authority he thinks he does. He refuses to wait until we need his input, and that’s why all this happened.”

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Open Meetings Law violations

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The North Elba Town Council conducted a meeting in violation of the Open Meetings Law on Feb. 1, which Erenstone said contributed to his belief that conversations regarding the new agreement with ORDA are being conducted out of the public eye.

On Feb. 1, Doty and town Councilors and Park District Liaisons Rick Preston and Emily Kilburn Politi met with Walden and ORDA Board of Directors Chairman Joe Martens. Martens joined the meeting via phone call.

A quorum for the town council is three members. This meeting established a quorum.

“Any time a quorum gathers for the purpose of discussing Town business, regardless of how that meeting is characterized, is a meeting that must be held in compliance with the Open Meetings Law,” Christen Smith, senior attorney at the state Committee on Open Government, wrote in an email.

A public body like the town council must give public notice of the time and location of a meeting before the meeting occurs. There was no notice given for the Feb. 1 meeting.

Doty said the meeting was a “mistake” and that he would define it as more of an introduction than a meeting, as the purpose of the gathering was for him to connect Preston and Kilburn Politi with Walden and Martens.

He and Walden both said that, at the meeting, they agreed to ask their lawyers to begin working on a draft agreement.

Social gatherings at which a quorum is present do not typically meet the definition of a meeting, Smith said, as long as there is no public business discussed. In that instance, public notice would not need to be given. However, the discussions in this meeting — confirmed by both Doty and Walden — would likely be considered public business under the definition outlined in the Open Meetings Law.

“It seems unlikely, in my opinion, that a quorum of a public body discussing a contract or potential contract could be described as a meeting where public business was not discussed,” Smith wrote. “If the gathering went beyond introductions and involved the discussion of public business such as a potential contract or lease, in our view, a court would likely find that such a gathering constituted a meeting that should have been held in compliance with the Open Meetings Law.”

The OML states that anyone can bring a public body to court if they believe that body has violated the OML. If a court determines that the public body violated the OML, it can require the members of the public body to participate in a training session about the OML.