Donald Tinty gave Farmington a historic barn and the open space around it in 2004, with a condition written into the deed as a covenant that runs with the land: the property would be kept and maintained as a public park. The question in front of the Town Council on May 12 was whether part of it could instead become the town's next cemetery — and a dozen residents came to say no.
The council did not vote to pursue a cemetery, and several members went out of their way to say so. What came out of the discussion was a single instruction for Town Manager Kathleen Blonski: get a formal legal opinion on the 2004 deed before the town does anything else with the site, and send every council member both the deed itself and the report she wrote the last time this came up, in 2018. The council then voted unanimously to accept her report.
The cemetery question shared the May 12 agenda with a far larger one — the council that night also advanced a $30-to-$35-million plan to overhaul the town's three volunteer fire stations. But the fire-station plan arrived with a committee, a process, and a unanimous vote behind it. The cemetery arrived with a deed nobody had a legal reading on.
Why it came back
Blonski put the cemetery question on the council's plate herself, in her town manager's report, and was direct about why. The town's cemetery on Garden Street is running out of room. For about 15 years, she said, the town has been looking for a site for a new one, and it has now evaluated every parcel it owns — the most recent, a property tested with soil borings, was the last town-owned option. The Cemetery Association came to her; it has already sketched a concept, Blonski said, for what a Don Tinty Park cemetery could look like. She brought the question to the council rather than keep working it quietly: "when they talk about transparency, this is again where we're at."
Blonski also told the council something none of them could. She was there in 2004. "I worked directly with Mr. Tinty when he did give the property to the town of Farmington," she said. "So I do have firsthand knowledge on what his intents were, a lot of it. Very clearly, we never talked about a cemetery." Tinty was focused on passive recreation and getting people down to the riverfront, she said; the athletic fields named in the deed were the town's idea, not his.
Two things would have to be settled before the town could move at all, Blonski said: whether the deed legally permits a cemetery, and whether the site's water table could support one. If the council is not interested in finding out, she said, the town tells the Cemetery Association so and moves on. Bruce L. Polsky, a First District Democrat, put a clock on the question — by his understanding, Garden Street has roughly two years of space left — and suggested the town's land acquisition committee start looking at parcels it could buy instead.
The neighbors
A dozen residents signed up to speak against the idea, nearly all of them from Nadia's Way and Old Canal Crossing, the streets that face the park. Several had done exactly this in 2018, the last time the proposal surfaced.
Brian Bell, of Nadia's Way, walked the council through the paper trail. In 2016, before buying his house, he reviewed the 2004 deed and emailed the town planner at the time, William Warner, who told him in writing that the land was preserved as permanent open space. When the cemetery idea first came up in 2018, residents asked Blonski to review it; her November 2018 report, Bell said, recommended against the park and told the council to look elsewhere. "What has changed since then?" he asked. He also told the council his seven-year-old son opens his blinds every morning hoping to spot a deer or a fox in the field across the street, and asked that the boy not grow up watching excavation equipment instead.
Liz Baggett, of Old Canal Crossing, read the deed's restriction aloud — the land is to be "used and maintained by as a park," with recreational improvements that "may include but are not limited to athletic fields, nature trails and river access." Then: "I don't know about you, but to me, burying the dead is not a recreational activity." She also read a Facebook comment from the man who has hayed the field for more than 20 years — his own tractor, his own fuel, the hay as his only compensation, at no cost to the town. A cemetery, she noted, would change that.
Luma Chalabi, an attorney who lives on Nadia's Way, framed it as a question of precedent. Overriding the conditions Tinty placed on his gift, she said, would open "a Pandora's box" — discouraging anyone from donating land or money to the town again. James Drake, who said he knew Tinty personally and used to talk with him out in the field, said Tinty's own vision had leaned toward a historical site, with hiking trails and river access — not burial plots. Raya Baghdadi, a sophomore at Farmington High School who lives across from the park, asked why a question residents thought was settled eight years ago was back at all. "It feels like the town is hoping people either forgot, stopped paying attention, or won't speak up."
That was the through-line of the night. Ramesh Patel, of Nadia's Way, told the council the proposal seems to "repeatedly surface whenever the town council membership changes," and asked for "permanent action" to take the park off the table. Melinda Pritz, also of Nadia's Way, said she was the one who started the petition that drew 97 signatures in three days against the 2018 proposal. A licensed marriage and family therapist who works from home across from the park, she told the council the proposal would affect her livelihood — and, like nearly everyone who spoke, asked for something that would not come back in another eight years.
What the council said
Every council member who spoke agreed on the path — a legal opinion on the deed before any work on the ground — and several acknowledged the neighbors' frustration directly.
Keith Vibert, a Second District Republican, was the most emphatic that the meeting had been misread. "This is not an agenda item," he said. "This is not something that town council, anybody that sets the agenda, said this is something we want to pursue." It was on the agenda only because it was in the town manager's report, he said, and he understood why — "your street is on the agenda. So I understand how it feels." What he wanted, whichever way it went, was finality: "Can we put the period on Tinty Farm?"
Dave Wlodkowski, a First District Democrat, was the most specific. The published cemetery update had referred to preliminary due-diligence work on the property this summer; Wlodkowski said he "would absolutely do no preliminary work until we have a legal opinion on exactly what that deed expresses." It should have been done in 2018, he said.
Patti Boye-Williams, a Second District Democrat and the only current council member who also served in 2018, said the town had done what it was asked to do back then — look at other sites — and had simply run out of them. "Now we're back to where we were eight years ago." She wanted the legal opinion, and an answer to a question nobody had raised: whether the town is even obligated to keep a cemetery once Garden Street fills. Nadine C. Canto, a First District Republican, asked the same thing more plainly — her own family lives in Farmington but is not buried here. William "Bill" Beckert, a Second District Democrat attending remotely, asked Blonski to send the council the 2018 report and a copy of the deed so he could read it himself.
What the neighbors wanted was a guarantee, and a legal opinion is not quite that. But it is the thing that did not happen in 2018. It is the thing the council agreed, on May 12, would happen before anything else does.
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— Jack Beckett has covered Farmington long enough to know that "we did this in 2018" is a sentence that gets said a lot and rarely settles anything. He is on his third coffee. He has read the deed language twice. ☕
*The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering — the proposal that keeps coming back, the deed nobody reads until it matters, the dozen neighbors who gave up a Tuesday night to say what they already said eight years ago. We publish slowly and without apology. Our motto is "Always last to breaking news," and we mean it: by the time you read this, the dust has settled, the votes are counted, and Jack Beckett has had at least two cups of coffee. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰