Major donors are reluctant to help protect Fort Williams Park without a guarantee of permanent protection, which the town manager says is already in place.

The Fort Williams Charitable Foundation, created in 2001 by the town to raise money to make the 90-acre property financially independent, asked the town in April to grant a conservation easement, saying donors want security for their contributions.

Clint Blood, the foundation’s president, said most people in Cape Elizabeth assume the park is permanently protected, but it is not. The foundation’s Web site states, “there are no binding restrictions against the sale of some, or all of the Fort at any time for any reason.”

Cape Elizabeth Town Manager Mike McGovern said the town cannot grant the easement because it would violate restrictions the town agreed to over the years when it accepted numerous federal grants affecting the primary 30 acres of the park. But he said those federal restrictions amount to permanent protection, especially when combined with town policy and a local zoning law, which also protect the park.

Blood said the town’s stewardship of the fort has been excellent in the past, but he also added that those ordinances and resolutions passed by the Town Council can always be changed. “We need that permanency in the future,” he said.

The easement proposal was drafted with help from the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which has extensive experience with conservation easements in the state. In the proposal the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting local land of scenic and historical significance, would receive the conservation easement.

However, an e-mail the town received from the National Park Service, which is the source of the federal grants, states, “at no time can a lease/conservation restriction be granted to a non-profit organization.”

Blood said no one was aware of the restriction that bars a non-profit from holding a conservation easement. But, Blood said, “the easement is only a tool.” The ultimate goal is permanent protection of the park.

McGovern said an easement could be granted to another government agency – the county, another city, to the state or to the federal government. But, “I think that would be a poor thing to do,” he said. “The responsibility for Fort Williams should rest with the town of Cape Elizabeth and their elected officers.”

The foundation will explore other avenues to permanently protect the park. “If we don’t, we’re leaving the door ajar for development and the sale of it in the future,” Blood said.

However, McGovern said, “there already is a lot of permanent protection.” For one, the federal grant requirements contain “very severe restrictions” on the “conversion of the protected area,” he said.

Also, a policy statement adopted by the Town Council in 1976 stated, “the portion of the Fort which includes all the shore front and the parade grounds should be permanently dedicated to use as public open space and should not be developed or built upon” – a policy that has been “followed religiously since,” McGovern said.

There is also as a town zoning ordinance that includes restrictions on use of the land. McGovern said three layers of protection already exist, and the foundation wants to add a fourth.

“There is no threat,” McGovern said, “and it is not necessary to manufacture a threat.”

Permanent protection over the park is “not only the right thing to do,” Blood said, “but it’s also very helpful in establishing a fund-raising tool for the park.”

The Town Council is scheduled to discuss the issue of permanent protection over the park at a workshop on July 14. If the Town Council is not interested in finding a way to permanently protect the park, Blood said, then raising enough money to make the park financially independent is a dead issue and the future of the foundation would be uncertain.