The Blissfest Music Organization’s mission statement states that we exist: "To promote and preserve the diversity and heritage of all traditional and ethnic music, dance and crafts. To support creators and innovators of these folk arts. To provide opportunities and resources that educate and encourage community participation."

It saddens us to discover through the Planned Unit Development (PUD) process that something in which we have invested a great deal of time, energy and money over the past 13 years and that has been a source of joy, satisfaction and accomplishment to our members and festival attendees is a problem for some of our neighbors. We say, "some", because it is not clear that the petition which has been circulated in opposition to Blissfest was presented in an unbiased manner. Some people may have signed this petition because they opposed an expansion of our activities. Some did not understand that it would be used to attempt to totally eliminate the festival. We clearly understand that our proposal, as it was originally presented, is not acceptable to area residents and we will not pursue that plan further.

We understood the PUD process to be one in which we could "float" our ideas and adjust the plan after input from township residents and officials, the county planning commission and the county board. As a volunteer organization that operates under democratic principles, we had only just begun a process to focus our vision. We saw our process as one in which we would get community input before we proposed a specific plan that would affect land use. We imagined that this process would take a few years, given the time limitations inherent in many volunteer organizations like ours. Unfortunately, we had to condense our process into six weeks in order to fit the PUD time line. So, our proposal included nearly every dream we had ever discussed. We did this because it was our understanding that a PUD required us to address all uses for the foreseeable future and that it is difficult to amend once it is in place; that any changes require the same processes as the original application, including all the notifications, time lines and public hearings.

We are very sorry if the result of this effort has polarized the neighbors and the community. All that we really want to do is a better job of holding our festival and cultivating a healthy organization in keeping with our mission statement.

Part of the problem is a misunderstanding, in our minds and those of our neighbors, as to precisely how the PUD process works. Another part of the problem is that Blissfest falls into a gray area as far as regulation under current zoning laws. We would welcome a "mass gathering ordinance" so that we would know precisely what our standard of performance needs to be. The Blissfest Music Organization has always followed the rules as we have understood them.

The attorney for the handful of families whose purpose it now appears is to eliminate the festival from our property entirely, stated at the Readmond Township Planning Committee hearing on January 9, that "My clients have worked with them (Blissfest) for four years..." There is nothing in our records indicating that any of his clients contacted us formally prior to the spring of 2000. To our knowledge, there weren’t any written township or county complaints either. To us, working "with someone" implies that you have informed someone of a problem, discussed it, proposed solutions, perhaps even argued and, then, walk away unsatisfied. This is not the case here. We want to take this opportunity to make that clear.

We understand that our event impacts area residents. For 13 years we have provided dust control on the gravel roads at our expense, routed traffic in a practical way, provided complimentary gate passes to all our immediate neighbors and, starting two years ago provided porta-johns and trash bins at the Cross Village beach and porta-johns at the Cross Village Store and have.

Additionally, we have refused a request to install several cell phone towers on our property(thus, turning down a significant source of income). We have also chosen to pay our property taxes rather than to exercise our right as a non profit corporation and request property tax relief. We chose to do this because it was our understanding that this burden would be shifted to our neighbors. When we have learned about community concerns in approriate ways, we have acted promptly. We cannot fix problems that we haven’t been informed of.

During the public discourse on our initial PUD, we heard from those people represented by the attorney and others. Some of these issues surprised us and they all concern us greatly. We mistakenly assumed that we would be apprised of these issues. Our neighbors may have thought that we should ask. We do apologize for our part of that oversight. We have, however, listened to their concerns and are already working on solutions. Our membership has already brain stormed creative ideas that include the possibility of a "community liaison" position to deal with local concerns and a "Blissfest Quick Response Team" to deal with the small percentage of festival patrons that may not behave properly when they are away from the festival site. We look forward to exploring both of these ideas in the near future.

We understand that if one doesn’t share our values as embodied in our mission statement, then the specific trade-off may not be worth the bother. We appeal to all our collective values; that all Americans have the right to gather freely and have the right to freely express themselves, provided that the purpose of these activities is not to cause trouble and that the organizers move to reduce the impact of any trouble that may arise. We believe that we have genuinely tried to do this and will continue to do so.

We do not understand, however, how we can get from 13 years of reasonable cooperation to a "we want you to go away" posture. Frankly, we are weary of inflammatory rhetoric designed to dehumanize our membership and all our festival patrons by placing them into the categories of "transient inhabitants", "Winnebago slums" , "most of them young and inebriated" and the mass media image of "Woodstock".

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the Blissfest Board of Directors,

by Ronald A. Fowler

President of the Blissfest Board of Directors

3596 Five Mile Creek Road

Harbor Springs, MI. 49740

(H)PH (231)526-9924

(W) (231)347-4211