What you need to know:
- A festival hosted by the Houston Grass Station Campground could become Houston’s first official city holiday under a measure proposed for the city's October ballot. The proposal would ask voters whether to designate the third Saturday in June as an official city for the nearby “Matanuska Thunder Funk” festival.
- Matanuska Thunder Funk, also known as the Matanuska Thunder Festival, is a family-friendly event that raises money for a local food bank. The event is hosted by the Houston Grass Station Campground, located next to the Houston Grass Station cannabis shop, but it is not marijuana-themed, officials said.
- The proposal, sponsored by Mayor Carter Cole, is scheduled for a City Council hearing on June 12. If approved, it will go to a public vote, allowing residents to decide on the holiday designation.
HOUSTON — A private festival hosted by a marijuana-themed campground could become Houston’s first official city holiday under a measure proposed for city ballots in October.
If approved for the ballot by the City Council, the measure would ask voters whether to declare the third Saturday of each June as “a holiday for Matanuska Thunder Funk,” according to the proposal.
Matanuska Thunder Funk is the name of a free, one-day festival hosted by the Houston Grass Station Campground. The event is also known as Matanuska Thunder Festival.
Houston Mayor Carter Cole sponsored the proposal. It is set to go before the City Council for consideration next month.
Houston currently has no official city holidays, according to the city code. An annual Founders Day event hosted by the city in late August and honoring the city’s history is not a recognized holiday under city law.
About 2,000 people live within Houston city limits, according to population data.
“Matanuska Thunder Funk” is a play on the name of a potent cannabis strain known as “Matanuska Thunder F---,” or MTF, which is sold at the Houston Grass Station, a cannabis shop adjacent to the campground that hosts the festival.
The Houston Grass Station Campground is designed as a 420-friendly destination to “get smoky in the great Alaskan outdoors,” according to its website. It first opened in 2019, according to state business registration documents.
Ron Bass, who co-owns both the Houston Grass Station Campground and the adjacent Houston Grass Station cannabis shop with his wife, Lacey Bass, organizes the event. He said he launched the free festival in 2023 as a family-friendly way to celebrate community and raise money for the Willow Food Bank.
Bass said he changed the name of the event to “Matanuska Thunder Festival” this year and wants the ballot measure to reflect that update. He said he plans to contact the city about editing the proposal.
“People are assuming that we're just gonna be selling pot and we're giving pot to kids, and we’re not. It's ridiculous,” he said. “I'm making a holiday so people can come together and have a blast. It has nothing to do with the Houston Grass Station — zero.”
While the Houston Grass Station cannabis shop will be open for sales during the festival, the event itself is not cannabis-friendly, he said. Any users will be relegated to a smoking bus on the campground property, and none of the festival vendors will carry cannabis-focused products, he said.
The new “Matanuska Thunder Funk” proposal is the latest in a series of efforts to recognize the event through an official city designation.
A resolution establishing “Matanuska Thunder Festival” as an “annual music festival family day” was proposed before the City Council in 2023 and rejected in a 5-2 vote, according to city records.
A similar resolution proposed by Cole last year failed to gain support for full consideration by the council. Cole ultimately issued a mayoral proclamation “supporting the 2nd Annual Children Day Matanuska Thunder Festival,” which included “a spaghetti feed … provided by Snoop Dogg’s personal chef Big Q Bone,” according to city documents.
Cole, who won reelection last year, said he proposed the current ballot measure after asking Bass to withdraw a petition he had prepared for the effort last year.
That petition was likely insufficient and would have required the city to pay for a legal review, Cole said in an interview. Rather than saddle the city with that cost, Cole offered to propose the measure himself and avoid the petition process, he said during a May 14 special Council meeting.
“I lived up to what I promised last year by returning it to let the people vote on it,” he said.
Bass said this year’s Matanuska Thunder Festival is scheduled for 2 to 8 p.m. June 21 and will include local vendors, a pie-eating contest, a DJ, donkey cart rides and a kids’ bouncy house. Donations will be collected for the food bank, he said.
Proceeds from a separate rap concert scheduled for the campground the next evening will also go to the food bank, Bass said. Tickets for that event are $40.
Officials with the Houston Lions Club said they plan to volunteer at the festival because it is a community-centered gathering. They declined to comment on whether a city holiday should be designated in its honor.
The Houston Grass Station and a grow operation run by Bass called Calm N Collective were among the first legal marijuana businesses in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in 2016.
Bass later shuttered Calm N Collective after state regulators placed his cultivation permit on probation following the corporation’s 2021 guilty plea to a count of pesticide misuse.
Houston is currently home to 14 businesses with active or pending marijuana cultivation licenses and two licensed retail cannabis shops, according to city records.
The proposal for the holiday ballot measure was introduced at a special city council meeting on May 14.
The council voted 5 to 1 to let the matter proceed to a full hearing, public testimony and vote at a council meeting scheduled for June 12. Council member Sandy McDonald voted “no,” and Council member Lisa Johansen was absent.
Council member Kent Mitchell, who initially voted to approve the introduction, later asked to reconsider the measure so he could change his vote to “no.” That reconsideration request was voted down 4 to 2, with McDonald and Mitchell voting in support.
McDonald said even considering a holiday affiliated with MTF marijuana is an embarrassment to the city.
“I believe this is just a little acronym — the MTF. We all know what the F stands for — we’re making it nice to be polite,” she said. “This is a disgrace and a discouragement to the people who live here and want something better for our city.”
Cole, who plans to volunteer for a dunk tank at this year’s festival, said his personal opinion on cannabis and the event is irrelevant and that residents should have a chance to vote on the matter.
Other members of the city council agreed.
“I think the obvious answer is to let the residents vote. It goes one way, it goes the other, it puts it to bed — that’s the end,” Council member Jeffrey Brasel said during the meeting. “I think the appropriate thing is to let the residents of Houston decide if they want this for Houston or not.”
A second ballot measure set for consideration at the June 12 meeting would ask voters whether to double the city’s sales tax to 4% for most purchases as a way to fund road improvements.
-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com
