Your Take: Should Farmington Have Renewed the Simmons' Farm Lease?

The town of Farmington's Farm Committee is reviewing two finalist candidates to lease a Town Farm Road farm, but the most recent tenants are not among them.

Ronald and Frank Simmons currently run a dairy farm there, but their lease expired April 30 and the town does not plan on renewing it. Thirteen applicants responded to the town's request for proposal to find a new tenant and nine were interviewed, including the Simmons family.

The Simmons Family Dairy Farm made yogurt that distributed to local and New York stores, according to a 2011 Farmington Patch story. The farm has also offered numerous educational programs and has many visitors for that, according to Farmington resident Judy Reardon, who spoke in favor of the farm staying at last week's Town Council meeting.

But Farmington Town Manager Kathleen A. Eagen said that the Simmons family consistently violated several terms of the lease over the past 10 years. The Simmons family also owes the town about $17,929 in delinquent rent payments.

Reardon said that part of the Simmons' financial woes came from legal fees from dealing with a cell phone tower on the property. While Reardon called the "double leasing" for the farm and cell tower illegal and said the Simmons family didn't know about before signing the lease, Eagen said Simmons verbally approved it.The town then signed a lease agreement with the cell tower company and later got Simmons to sign a formal agreement. He did so on the condition the town removed manure that had piled up over the years and debris, removed vegetation along the proposed road to the cell tower, regraded the road between dairy and storage barns, waive certain "events of default" by Simmons prior to the agreement as well as $8,000 in late rental payments, and to use half of the lease revenue for the cell tower to make improvements to the farm.

In a statement to Patch, she said the farmers have also neglected the health of their cattle, "including the care and disposal of dead cattle," as well as the cleanliness and maintenance of the farm. She also said that he hasn't renewed certain permits, licenses registrations and other paperwork or "maintained adequate general liability insurance coverage."