Roadside parking concerns prompt heated Town Board standoff
by Robert Lynch; August 23, 2026
Like it or not, it’s going to happen. And Enfield officials claim they’re powerless to smooth out the rough edges.
At the end of this month, in what some might call a GrassRoots Festival in miniature, the Stone Bend Farm event center in Enfield will host “The BBQ VIII,” a self-described “two day event of music, art and camping.” It’ll be held the weekend of August 28-29. And for the Town of Enfield, for its leaders—and most critically for Stone Bend Farm’s neighbors—the central question arises: Where is everybody going to park?
That single question did its best to tear the first 30 minutes of the Enfield Town Board’s meeting apart August 12. A handful of Porter Hill and Hines Road residents and property owners took one side. Stone Bend Farm’s proprietor Terry Bloom—who’s also Enfield’s Deputy Town Supervisor—took the other. Bloom found himself playing defense and fought back. At times, Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond defaulted as the referee.
The two day music fest appeared on Enfield’s radar only recently. Resident Rosanna Carpenter, a candidate last year for Town Board, revealed BBQ VIII’s planned arrival at a Town Board meeting in early-July. Supervisor Redmond claimed at the time she was unaware it was happening.
But in the five weeks between meetings, publicity grew. Social media churned. And some of Stone Bend Farm’s neighbors got angry.
“This town should not have to provide Terry Bloom with a parking lot,” Rodger Linton, whose property abuts Stone Bend’s, told Enfield’s August meeting. Linton insisted that Bloom should create adequate, off-road parking on his own land if he wanted to hold large-scale concerts like this.
Linton claimed that during a prior Stone Bend Farm event, when cars had lined Porter Hill Road and Linton was driving between them at low speed, an adult caregiver got distracted. Her child darted out between vehicles, and Linton almost struck the kid.
“It could have been an absolute catastrophe,” Linton told the Town Board, “and it’s totally avoidable.”
“The Town of Enfield should not be put at this kind of risk,” Linton emphasized. “I shouldn’t be put at that kind of risk.”
Linton also faulted Terry Bloom for the loud music that pierces the air during Stone Bend’s frequent events. “I shouldn’t have to listen to Terry’s music,” the neighbor declared.
“Something bad’s going to happen,” a Hines Road resident, who lives across from Stone Bend, warned on meeting night. “They’re going to get a lot of cars there, a lot of people, and I’m worried that somebody’s going to get hurt; somebody’s going to get killed. And I really hope that doesn’t happen; but you guys have to address this,” she stressed to the Town Board.
But to some of those “guys” (and women) who govern Enfield, immediate action is easier said than done.
Councilperson Jude Lemke, the only member of the Town Board who holds a law license, said banning cars from Porter Hill and Hines Road’s grassy shoulders could only follow a cumbersome, months-long process to write and adopt a new law.
“While we may have authority to regulate parking on town roads, we don’t have authority today,” Lemke advised. “We would have to pass a local law,” she said. “It’s certainly something we should look at, but it’s not something we can do between now and next week.”
Supervisor Redmond agreed.
Yet even though town government may not be able to wield its police power rapidly, roadside landowners hold the perfect right to take matters into their own hands. And they will or already have .
Bill Armstrong owns 2,300 feet of frontage along Hines and Porter Hill Roads. It includes the field immediately across from the event center. Armstrong told the board he’ll erect his own “No Parking” signs on the shoulder and maybe string flagging tape along the shoulder for good measure.
“When that car door opens on the driver’s side, it’s into the blacktop,” Armstrong said of shoulder-side parking. “If it opens on the passenger’s side, it’s on my property,” he added. “I just don’t want anybody on my property.”
Armstrong said he fears liability should someone stumble into the ditch or get hit in the road.
“I think the Town should help me out with this,” the 55-year Hines Road resident appealed to Enfield’s leaders. “Otherwise I’m going to have to talk with my lawyer, my insurance company; I’m going to have to barricade where I see fit, and maybe you won’t like it.”
On Tuesday, August 18, Terry Broom offered the neighborhood the closest thing to an olive branch.
He made good on plans that were still under incubation during the prior Wednesday’s Town Board meeting. Bloom announced on social media that he’d secured “premier parking” in a field across Hines Road from Stone Bend’s venue. He said it would accommodate 100 cars. Yet it’ll cost patrons to park there; $15 per day or $25 for the two-day event. Given that BBQ VIII two-day tickets already cost $60 apiece, attendee interest in chipping in still more money remains an unanswered question.
Nonetheless, as Bloom assured, “You can still park along the road and get shuttled in for free.” Just where you should park for pick-up by the shuttle, the event operator didn’t specify.
“I will park them all on my land if it comes to that,” Bloom assured the Town Board August 12. But he failed to identify just where there’s space for hundreds of cars on Stone Bend’s property.
By Friday, August 21, Bill Armstrong remained resolute about his intentions. Another neighbor, who resides across from the Porter Hill/Hines intersection, had already erected red-topped wooden stakes, obstructions too numerous for anyone to navigate around. We’re told John Rancich, who owns a long swath of Hines Road frontage, will ban parking in front of his properties. All the while, the Enfield Town Board had yet to take any action. Most likely, it won’t.
Terry Bloom’s original plan was to sell up to 500 admission tickets to BBQ VIII. But as a constituent brought to this Councilperson’s attention, a 500-guest attendance would trigger Enfield’s 2010 Mass Gatherings Law.
Under the Mass Gatherings Law, the event’s promoter would need to give the Town 90 days’ advance notice—a deadline already well passed—prior to the event. Detailed plans for parking, fire protection, medical care, sanitary facilities, garbage collection, and security would need to be filed. For BBQ VIII, legal compliance at July’s late date would have precluded it from happening.
On July 9, following discussions with Enfield Codes Officer Alan Teeter, Terry Bloom voluntarily cut his planned ticket sales from 500 to 350.
“The Big Mean Barbeque,” as it was originally called, originated about a decade ago near Trumansburg. It began in a field not far from the GrassRoots fairgrounds. Some say it wore out its welcome with the locals. It may have wandered around a bit, searching for a home. Its journey becomes hard to track. (This Councilperson’s Town Board statement of August 12 that the Barbeque had allegedly played last year at Danby’s South Hill Cider mill based itself on inaccurately-received information.)
Judging from this year’s roster of some 24 scheduled bands, BBQ VIII’s acts are B-list (or lower). Most performers are regional or local. And you might not know many of their names. Few of us Gen-X or older are apt to recognize groups like “Proper Philth,” the “Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad,” or “Lil Stupid Ass.” (The Dub Squad played in 2018 at the Fourth Big Mean BBQ, reports tell us.)
Gates open Friday, August 28 just before Noon. The event continues until Midnight the following Saturday night, maybe a bit beyond. There’ll be camping on the Stone Bend Farm’s’ grounds for an additional charge. Campsites may be sold out.
How Privilege-of-the-Floor turned feisty during the Town Board’s August meeting came only after things got personal.
It happened when Rosanna Carpenter publicly accused Terry Bloom of graphic incivility against her—or more likely against someone she knows—during an earlier encounter. It’s an allegation Bloom vehemently denies.
“That’s Bulls**t,” Bloom shot back from the gallery.
Words between the two flew back and forth. Rodger Linton got involved. Supervisor Redmond intervened in a futile attempt to break up the verbal fistfight.
“Guys! Hey, guys, we’re not doing that,” Redmond refereed as best she could.
Bloom was heard to hurl another obscenity. For Redmond, control was slipping away.
“Hey, Terry, this is what we do,” Redmond admonished and sought to calm down her deputy. “Just let it go.”
Terry Bloom, in turn, was accorded his three minutes to speak. He took longer. Nobody stopped him.
“What I find here to be very sad is that not one person sitting here (who’s criticizing me) has ever been to an event at Stone Bend Farms,” Bloom addressed not so much the Town Board, but instead those sitting beside him. “I have over 25 years of special event experience,” Bloom represented. “We have had countless events. We have had zero issues.”
Bloom said that during Stone Bend’s six-year history, never has law enforcement been called; there’s never been a drunk driver, and no one’s gotten into a car accident. The only customer complaints, Bloom claimed, stem from neighbors’ behavior. And he may consult his lawyer about that problem.
“We do not operate like other people; we operate on a higher bar,” Bloom maintained.
But while commending his own business, Stone Bend’s proprietor had tough words for its critics.
“It makes me really sad to know it’s devolved into a place where they’re so jaded that they can’t embrace and come up with a solution instead of trying to tear down the positivity around it,” Bloom observed.
But it was Stone Bend Farm’s owner’s final observation that likely carved the deepest groove… either for good or to move the conversation in some different direction:
“I hear a lot of ‘I shouldn’t have to do this; I shouldn’t have to that’” Terry Bloom observed. “I think that’s BS. None of us are owed anything. We are owed to be better people for each other. We are not owed silence. Who decides when loud music can be played and when it can’t; what kind of music it is? This sounds a lot like fascism to me.”
To those who only ask for peace and quiet on a Saturday night or a safe road wide enough for a fire truck to pass and for a kid not to be hit, Bloom’s meeting message did not rest well. It likely earned him no friends. No one likes being called a fascist.
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Enfield Board, we’ve got a problem, and I don’t know quite how to fix it,” this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, wrote in his own prepared statement read to the Town Board August 12. I did not know whether Barbeque VIII would be brought up by anyone else that night. (Of course, it was; it drew the most attention.)
I recalled the death of Newfield’s Amber Rawn, who died after being struck on Van Kirk Road last May, Rawn having done nothing more than attempting to remove a dead cat from a darkened roadway. I didn’t want something similar to occur at Stone Bend’s late-August event.
“I know Terry means well,” I said. “But this event will overwhelm his place. He’s planning for 350 guests. He wanted more. And you know how these things often work. More people just show up. Two days, numerous bands, hundreds of cars. Stone Bend Farm becomes a magnet.”
“I want BBQ-VIII to bring nothing but joy and wonderful memories to those who attend, not the scar of some tragedy that we in Enfield never get to forget,” I continued. “Keeping the public safe is our Job Number One. It’s our highest duty. It’s why we’re at this table. And we’ve done nothing so far. So Board, what do we do?”
Supervisor Redmond repeated her position that without a local law—a requirement that underlying state statute leaves ambiguous—Enfield stands powerless to put up “No Parking” signs before month’s end. We must take our chances.
“I’m not going to have blood on my hands,” this Councilperson rebutted calmly. No, those last words weren’t scripted. They just felt right to spill onto the record at that crucial moment. August 12 was a night for strong words.
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