ROTHBURY, Mich. — The Electric Forest festival in Rothbury is just two months away and there is concern about congested traffic. This year many are also upset about restrictions on tickets to the festival that neighbors are given because of the inconvenience.
"It's basically putting these people under a house arrest because they won't really be able to leave their house, walk across the street or do anything because they will actually be inside of Electric Forest," said Patricia Day, a resident of Rothbury.
The Rothbury Village Council hosted a meeting Tuesday night where the city briefly discussed the community's concerns over the Electric Forest festival. This meeting comes after many complaints by the community and neighbors of the surrounding area, raising concerns over chaos with ticket distribution, congested traffic and poor cell service.
"What we experienced during this time is lack of cell phone service, unable to travel our own roads. If there's an emergency, the emergency personnel, police are unable to get to us. And this is affecting us in a lot of ways because this is a festival that takes place in our front yards," said Day.
More than 30,000 people attended last year's Electric Forest festival and this year is expected to be no different. The event administrator for the village of Rothbury said one of the main concerns he's heard from the community is the new ticket system for the festival.
"The way the program has been is people who lived in the affected area and again, those boundaries are determined by the festival organizers, would be provided with complimentary wristbands for entry for the entire festival...They've changed that now for this year, that's going to change to just a one day entry for the Sunday of the event," said Doug Roesler, Village of Rothbury Event Administrator.
Roseler said the village of Rothbury has nothing to do with how the tickets for the festival will be distributed.
"The village doesn't have anything to do with this program. They're not involved in it in any way. And so it's something like I said, it's something that the festival organizers implemented way back with the very first Rothbury festival before it became the Electric Forest festival. They understand that, you know, there is an impact in the small community, especially for people who live on the roads that are closed off for periods of time," said Roesler.
No action was taken by the village council. The community is still waiting for answers from the Electric Forest organizers about restricting the number of tickets they receive.
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