Cape Elizabeth Notes

Childrens Garden

At its Dec. 9 meeting, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council accepted a $529,735 plan to construct a childrens garden at Fort Williams Park as part of the Fort Williams Foundations ongoing arboretum project.

The site, designed by Mitchell & Associates Landscape Architects of Portland, is scheduled to be built behind the tennis courts on Farnsworth Road in 2015, using private donations. In addition to a pond and stream, the site will include a stone seating circle for presentations, a meadow maze, a birch tree fort and a fairy house building.

Foundation calculations show the garden will require almost $20,000 in annual maintenance costs. Town Council Chairman Jessica Sullivan said the council will take up the garden plans in a workshop session to be scheduled in February.

Canopy grant

With the 50th anniversary of Fort Williams Park on tap for 2014, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council has applied for a $32,759 Project Canopy grant from the USDA Forest Service.

If awarded, the money will be used to clear invasive species and plant some 240 native trees and shrubs at the entrance to the Cliff Walk, a shorefront area cleared in 2012 thanks to $324,000 in private fundraising, $113,000 in in-kind donations, and hundreds of hours of volunteer labor and part of an ongoing arboretum project. If funded, the work will take place through the spring and summer of 2014.

Rules change

The Cape Elizabeth Town Council has amended its rules to allow for some voting when in a workshop setting. Ordinarily, a public body is barred from casting votes when operating in a workshop setting. However, the new rules assert the councils right to conduct some procedural votes, such as whether or not to recuse a member from debate, or to enter executive session.

The need for the change arose during a September workshop on the Spurwink Rod & Gun Club, at which the council was temporarily stymied on how it might vote to recuse Councilor Jamie Wagner, an attorney who represented a Cross Hill resident in a dispute with the club prior to his tenure on the council. Although a vote on recusal did take place, there was considerable debate at the time over whether the workshop would have to be scuttled until a recusal vote could be made at a regular council meeting.

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Cape Elizabeth Notes