Bus pass: Cape Elizabeth Town Council leans toward charging bus fees for Fort Williams Park.

CAPE ELIZABETH — The Cape Elizabeth Town Council is about to test whether or not “no” really means “no.”

In 2006, and again in 2010, local voters nixed plans to charge an entry fee to historic Fort Williams Park, doing so both times by decided margins. But last May, the fee idea was floated once again, this time limited to commercial operators, such as bus tours and trolley cars.

A public hearing will be held at Town Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 7:30 p.m., to discuss the proposal. The debate centers on whether Cape councilors and residents view the popular park as a gift to visitors, a paid attraction, or somewhere in between.

The council will weigh in with its vote Nov. 14. However, based on semi-heated debate at Monday’s Town Council workshop, the question is now supported by a 4-3 margin. Town officials have said that unlike the question regarding parking fees for passenger vehicles, the bus fee option will not be put to a public vote.

As drafted, the plan is to charge a $40 gate fee to all tour buses, whether sent from a cruise ship or “arriving randomly” – the so-called “rogue buses,” which town officials admit will be harder to corral into ponying up. Trolleys that frequent the park will be assessed a $1,500 annual entrance fee.

“That seems really inconsistent to me,” said Councilor Anne Swift-Kayata. “I’ve had a number of people also say to me, ‘No fee means no fee.”

Council Chairman David Sherman agreed, calling the idea “incredibly hypocritical.” 

“I think the motivation to charge buses is that people don’t want to see buses in the fort at all,” said Sherman. “We want to share the fort as a gift to the world, but we don’t want to share it with people who happen to come in on a bus?”

Councilor Caitlin Jordan cautioned that an entry fee could convince some tour operators to ferry their sightseers elsewhere, costing the town both the fee and tourist dollars spent in the museum gift shop at Portland Head Light.

Town Manager Michael McGovern said the museum grossed $500,000 in sales last year. However, net revenue after product costs and wages amounts to just $70,000 “in a good year,” he said.

Still, fear of frustrating foot traffic did no appear to weigh heavily with the balance of the council – Frank Governali, James Walsh, Jessica Sullivan and Sara Lennon – all of whom came down in favor of the fees.

“Buses in this park have a huge impact,” said Walsh. “Diesel fumes is one thing, but they also have an impact on roads and parking areas, or anywhere they go in that park. It really wasn’t constructed for buses.”

“What we heard [from voters] was keep it free,” said Walsh, “but buses are a commercial enterprise.”

“They’re making a really big profit on our park,” agreed Lennon. “We just want a tiny little bit of it. I think that’s fair.”

When the Fort Williams Advisory Commission advanced the bus fee idea last May, its chairman, Bill Nickerson, said 784 buses entered the park in 2010, while three trolley cars made regular runs from Portland. Based on that, he said, the commission’s suggested fee structure would raise $35,860. McGovern has since said the true revenue will likely be “about $30,000,” after factoring out costs to administer fee collection.

Soon after Nickerson first unveiled the plan, Michael Foye, a tour guide for Intercruise Shoreside and Port Services, said his company ferries about 23,000 people into Fort Williams Park on 525 bus trips during its 33-day season.

“If you do that math – $40 times 525 buses – it’s over $21,000,” he said. “This is a significant impact on us.”

“They’ll just pass it on,” Swift-Kayata said Monday. “Now you tell me my friend from New York can drive into the Fort for free, park, use the fort, look at things, whatever, stay there all day, put a lot of use on the fort, but, my 87-year-old aunt, she comes in on a bus tour and she has to pay more?

“I don’t understand why we would charge people on buses, who tend to be older people, who might not have access to the fort any other way,” said Swift-Kayata.

“We’re not charging the individual, we’re charging the company that is making an enormous profit,” said Lennon.

Sullivan said two friends of hers were charged $60 each to ride a bus tour into the park earlier this year. Breaking out her calculator, she concluded that tour companies clear $2,400 on each load of 40 they run.

“It’s a commercial enterprise,” said Governali, noting that school trips and nonprofit excursions will be exempt from the gate fee.

“We have a precedent now for charging commercial enterprises for using the fort to make money,” he added, pointing to this year’s first-ever allowance of food vendors in the park.

Like that new program, any money made off bus tours will go toward capital improvements at the park, McGovern said. It will not mitigate the cost to taxpayers for routine park maintenance, which this year topped $244,000.