The Saranac Lake Winter Carnival is organized and run entirely by volunteers whose sole mission is to preserve and protect this historic community tradition. Our role is to produce and oversee official Winter Carnival events and to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Carnival itself.

Each year, Winter Carnival brings tens of thousands of visitors to Saranac Lake. We do the work of getting people here. We actively promote our sponsors and encourage visitors to support the businesses and organizations that make Winter Carnival possible.

For the many other outstanding events, activities and entertainment options in our community that are not Winter Carnival-sponsored events, the model is simple: We bring the people in. It is then the responsibility of individual businesses and organizations to engage those visitors and bring them through their doors.

This balance allows Winter Carnival to remain focused on its core mission — preserving a cherished community tradition — while still providing a powerful economic boost to the entire region.

We at Winter Carnival have been inundated recently with requests for local events to be added to our schedule.

As explained numerous times, we are limiting our schedule to our events and highlighting sponsors. Merchandise sales and sponsors are the source of our revenue that pays for all our expenses.

Winter Carnival is a non-profit organization staffed entirely with volunteers. The website, which we paid for and maintain, is a tool we use to promote the Winter Carnival. We do not sell advertising to be included. Businesses and organizations that support us are sponsoring Winter Carnival, and receive various levels of recognition in return.

Our policy regarding inclusion on our schedule is that we limit entries to official, sponsored and traditional events. Yes, we’ve listed much more in the past, and we are currently restricting our inclusions. Past calendars have been overfull of all sorts of wonderful events, but many are not unique to the Carnival.

We will be further limiting calendar events in the future. We highlight our generous sponsors, and those in the future who are open sponsors will be limited to listing Carnival-only related events at their places of business.

Factors for what we consider for approved events include how it relates to Winter Carnival, and often if it requires insurance coverage. We obtain use permits for the village parks and the state boat launch.

We have an Ice Palace build, three nights of fireworks, the Gala Parade, the Kiddie Parade, the Women’s Civic Chamber Royalty Coronation, numerous sporting events, Accessibility Day, Family Night at the Palace … add to this the ongoing challenge of parking within the village, coordination with all the village agencies and a complex organization of volunteers that accomplish the near impossible every year.

The demands of our services are unfair to the many volunteers of the Carnival. We are not perfect, and we are striving to improve our operations and policies every year. The activities of various operations within our large organization have sometimes been loosely arranged, and we continually review and seek improvements to better serve our goals and to eliminate conflicts. Additionally, requests in the month of January are often too late for inclusion. We have publications that go to print, and the weeks leading up to the 10-day event in early February are hectic for the majority of volunteers.

A link from the Chamber of Commerce listing all the non-Carnival events and entertainment should be on our website soon. We are not responsible for that list or the link. As a compromise, we agreed to include this link on our website. Any questions or concerns regarding that list should be directed to the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber’s role is to promote tourism and local business. If any organization that compiles a list of local events wishes, we will consider including a link on our website.

It is our hope that this serves as a clarification of our purpose and our policies.

Happy Carnival!

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David Rockefeller is a resident of Saranac Lake.