Bluegrass festival a tame affair

MAT-SU — The first of two planned Trapper Creek Bluegrass Festivals for this year happened over Memorial Day weekend and reports are generally positive.

“It went great,” said festival organizer Justin Boot Rousseau, who owns the land on which the festival takes place.

The festival had run into a bit of controversy just before it was set to start when the Mat-Su Borough announced it had received a court order requiring the festival to obey borough laws. Specifically, the borough was concerned that previous incarnations of the festival had brought in more than 500 people. By law, festivals in the borough need to get a permit if more than 500 people attend. Rousseau has never had a permit.

“They didn’t ask me to stop or tell me I went over the limit or nothing,” he said of borough staff who were on hand to count festival-goers as they entered or exited.

He said last weekend’s festival lasted three days. Another three-day event is scheduled for August. Rousseau has repeatedly denied exceeding the 500-person limit, saying he doesn’t want a festival that large and doesn’t even print enough tickets to allow that many people admission.

This year, he thinks he was about a dozen or two attendees under the limit, but he hasn’t gotten an official count of ticket sales.

The borough actually disputes that.

“Our official count was 538,” said borough Code Compliance Officer Pam Ness. “The whole weekend the counts fluctuated. It didn’t stay at 538 for very long.”

She said borough staff counted people going into the festival and subtracted people coming out. They were on scene from 8 a.m. Friday to 5:30 p.m. Sunday. What that means for Rousseau legally has yet to be decided, Ness said. Code compliance officials will sit down with borough attorneys and senior borough officials to review legal options.

“We’re having a meeting next week to evaluate our legal position and what we’re going to do next,” she said.

The borough’s initial press releases and its court filings contained quotes from neighbors who complained about raucous partying during the annual festival.

On that score, at least, Rousseau and the borough agreed in assessing the nature of this year’s festival. Rousseau noted that one of the neighbors who had trouble with him in years past went so far as to publicly state that this year’s festival went off without a hitch.

The Frontiersman also published a letter to the editor June 3 from John Baumeister, one of Rousseau’s neighbors, who was complimentary of the improvements he made to respond to concerns.

“I had been pretty vocal in the past about trespassing and other issues,” Baumeister wrote in his letter. “I want to thank Justin and his crew for putting in a ton of effort to make sure his festival did not run over onto the neighbors. I was very impressed with the parking arrangements, containment of the festival and the trash removal.”

Ness agrees that the revelers were exceedingly well behaved. She said everyone parked and camped on Rousseau’s property and no one left the festival grounds.

“There was no altercations, no fights, nobody getting into anybody’s face,” Ness said. “We actually got people coming out of the party saying that they actually liked it a lot better than last year.”

Borough staff standing 500 feet away could barely hear any noise, Ness said. She said public campgrounds are usually noisier than that.

Part of the borough’s order allowed officials to summon Alaska State Troopers if they needed to shut the festival down. Ness said troopers were on scene briefly but only to check to make sure everything was going well. Troopers said they also were surprised at how well the gathering went.

“They were like, ‘are they holding the festival?’” Ness said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.