SARANAC LAKE — The North Country Sports Council is not going to be able to bring the World and U.S. snowshoe championships to Saranac Lake in March, after government funding for the event was not able to be secured on a short timeline.

The NCSC put in bids on both championships and won the rights to host them. It then sought proposals from venues to figure out where the races will take place.

In September, NCSC Executive Director Matt Dougherty — a Saranac Lake native — said he ideally wanted to hold the events in his hometown. Paul Smith’s College and the town of Harrietstown put in a joint proposal to hold the competition at the college’s Visitor Interpretive Center and town-owned Dewey Mountain Recreation Center.

“Sadly … we’re not going to be able to bring it here,” Dougherty said this week. “The timing of this one didn’t work for everyone.”

He said they started with an already tight timeline, ran out of time and needed to make sure the event happens. The council’s first priority is to make sure the sport’s governing bodies get the event they were promised in the contract, so they had to find a different location.

Dougherty said he can’t announce where the championships will be held yet, but they will likely be outside of the area.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Dougherty said; the funding and timing were not working in their favor.

The event was estimated at costing around $200,000 to put on.

NCSC was planning on putting up around half itself, Dougherty said, while seeking the other half from Franklin County bed tax funds and from local governments, with the county to have contributed the majority of that half.

The county’s occupancy tax law, sometimes colloquially referred to as the “bed tax,” places a 5% tax on all rented rooms at hotels, motels, bed-and-breakfasts and vacation rentals, with that revenue to be spent on tourism promotion. Spending of this money is approved by the county legislature with advice from the Tourism Advisory Committee.

The timing schedules of some state grants did not work for this event, Dougherty said, creating a heavier financial load for local governments than they wanted.

The NCSC was asking for $10,000 each from the town of Harrietstown and village of Saranac Lake. With local governments feeling tight budgets this year, the boards had discussed if they’d be able to support this.

Dougherty said the town and village were cooperative and communicative, and were working on offering in-kind services to help.

Franklin County Economic Development and Tourism Director Phil Hans, the liaison between the TAC and the legislature, said the county hadn’t come to a conclusion yet on the level of support it would be able to commit to. But, he added that it likely wouldn’t have been what the NCSC was asking for.

Dougherty said the county had already committed tourism money to other priorities this year. Hans said the tourism budget is created a year in advance. Dougherty said the snowshoe contracts came at the wrong place in the fiscal cycle.

He doesn’t want to make it sound like the government wasn’t willing to participate in trying to get this to work. He said everyone had “skin in the game,” but the event needed a larger contribution than the county was going to be able to offer at this time.

He knew the approximately $100,000 ask would be large, but not unprecedented. And he believed it would be a worthy investment. One of his main goals with the NCSC is to bring large sporting events to the area, to increase tourism, generate bed tax revenue and serve as a foundation for getting even more events.

Saranac Lake hosted the 2017 World Snowshoe Championships at Dewey Mountain, which brought in 262 athletes to compete on trails that volunteers had filled with snow after a warm spell. This event cost $150,000, with the state putting in $75,000 and the village putting in a lot of staff hours.

The 2025 championships are planned to be a combined three-day competition series on the first weekend of March to bring an estimated combined 400 athletes from all over the nation and world.

Dougherty said he plans to continue working to bring sporting events to Saranac Lake. Hans said the county will support them when they are able.