LAKE PLACID — The Essex County Department of Motor Vehicles satellite office in Lake Placid is closed until May 2023 because the DMV is struggling to find staff to keep the office open.

Both the Lake Placid and Ticonderoga DMV satellite offices are closed — both due to staffing issues, according to the Essex County DMV website — leaving the Elizabethtown DMV as the county’s only open DMV.

The Lake Placid DMV in the North Elba Town Hall has only been open since May 2021. People in Essex County can go to the DMV in Saranac Lake on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., though the Saranac Lake office generates revenue for Franklin County, not Essex County. Last year, Essex County Clerk Joseph Provoncha said that was why he wanted to open the Lake Placid location. Essex County keeps 12.7 cents of every dollar residents spend on renewing their licenses and registration at DMV locations within the county. The county also collects a $25 execution fee on passports. Residents can go to either county’s DMV.

North Elba town Supervisor Derek Doty said the Lake Placid DMV has been struggling with staffing for a while now. The office was originally supposed to be open two days a week, but he said that was shaved down to one day a week because of staffing shortages. Over the last six weeks, Doty said, the office has been struggling to stay open at all, with the DMV “on again and off again, open or closed.”

“It’s been frustrating, to say the least,” Doty added.

Doty — who sits on the Essex County Board of Supervisors, along with every other town supervisor in the county — said the county has applications out for new positions at the DMV, but thought it’d be unlikely that the Lake Placid DMV could open before May 2023. He again called the situation “frustrating” — not only for locals who need DMV services, but also for Essex County DMV workers who are trying to make sure the services remain available.

“No one is shirking their responsibilities,” Doty said. “We just need some new applicants.”

DMVs in Franklin and Essex counties over the last couple of years have all suffered from the regional staffing shortages that Doty said are “common across the board with all levels of employment.”