Create A Centralized Lake Authority
It is time to return to and implement the first requirement in County Executive Borrello’s Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) agreed to by the County and over twenty-five Lake stakeholders in 2019. We must form the Centralized Lake Authority, a legal entity consisting of elected representatives. And, the NCSU Lake Management Plan, prepared under the auspices of the Chautauqua Lake and Watershed Management Alliance (Alliance) with local foundation and County funding, is ready to be the Comprehensive Lake Management Strategy, the CLMS, as in the original MOA, in 2025.
Unfortunately, “creation of a central authority”, “definition of its responsibilities and organizational structure”, and the “creation and implementation of a CLMS” included in this MOA requirement was never begun. Instead, the County left responsibility for one of its requirements, “funding priorities”, to the existing Alliance. And, with the original MOA replaced with severely “watered down” and ineffective Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) in 2021, 2023, and now 2025, MOU’s which County Executive Wendell described as “brilliant in its simplicity”, that’s where things remain today, six years later.
The county, the executive and its legislature, have, over the years and more and more, delegated Lake responsibilities to the Alliance and the Chautauqua Institution. This is of great concern since business and property owners and Lake users are not represented by these surrogate organizations. Even IF consistent with Law, it’s a dereliction of the County’s responsibility to its constituents and taxpayers to delegate such to private entities.
Alliance staff and Board members have publicly stated that they don’t have the authority to manage the Lake, they don’t in fact manage the Lake, and they don’t work for or answer to members of the public but only to its member organizations. The County has described the Alliance approach as “…a decentralized style of management where everybody does their own thing…” as they have argued against the need for the NCSU Plan. It’s a free for all.
The Alliance is a private organization with a Board elected only by their members and with fiduciary responsibility only to its members. Their deliberations and actions are out of the reach of open meeting laws and Freedom of Information Act information requests. County government’s constituents, that is County property owners and taxpayers, have no say in selecting or replacing Board members or their actions.
Now, since December 2024, when County Legislature Chairman Chagnon made a motion, County Executive Wendel seconded it, and the Alliance Board approved it unanimously, the public is welcome at only one Alliance Board meeting a year, reduced from twelve a year its early years to six a year in recent years. Apparently the Alliance prefers to deliberate and funnel County and local foundation funds to Board member organizations in secret. The current structure, with the County delegating the lead on our Lake to the non-representative private Alliance, is inappropriate and has proven ineffective after ten years of trying.
Another way must be found.
You might ask “what could that other way be” and “if not the Alliance, then what”? Interestingly, such a way was identified by the former County Executive and agreed to by the County Legislature and more than twenty-five Lake stakeholders six years ago.
In early 2019, State Senator George Borrello, then County Executive, worked with Lake organizations to develop the “Memorandum of Agreement – Chautauqua Lake Weed Management Consensus Strategy”, commonly referred to as the MOA. Unfortunately, after George Borrello was appointed to fill a vacant position in the NY State Senate in late 2019, P J Wendell became County Executive seven months into the MOA’s two-year term. At the end of that MOA term in May 2021, only 25% of the MOAs twenty-three requirements had been satisfied. George Borrello’s departure, P J Wendell’s ascendancy, and the lack of accountability for MOA implementation contributed to its failure.
In any case, the first and most significant MOA requirement called for the “…creation of a Central Lake Authority that will define the responsibilities, funding priorities, and an organizational structure for the creation and implementation of a Comprehensive Lake Management Strategy (CLMS)…” This was agreed to by all MOA signatories.
It is time to return to and implement the first requirement in County Executive Borrello’s Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) agreed to by the County and over twenty-five Lake stakeholders in 2019. We must form the Centralized Lake Authority, a legal entity consisting of elected representatives. The NCSU Lake Management Plan, prepared under the auspices of the Alliance with local foundation and County funding, is ready to be the Comprehensive Lake Management Strategy, the CLMS, as in the original MOA, in 2025.
The Chautauqua Lake Property Owners Association is a 501c3 non-profit focused on the interests of Chautauqua lake property and business owners and Lake users.
Jim Wehrfritz is president of the Chautauqua Lake Property Owners Association Inc.and a Bemus Point resident.