WHO'S AFRAID OF BIG, BAD INCORPORATION?

Is it any wonder Pelican Bay has a circle-the-wagons mentality?

Beaten like a pinata over the years by county government, by city council and, all too often, by the Naples Daily News, this North Naples community is under attack again.

The latest charge is that Pelican Bay is somehow behind Senate Bill 692, recently amended to permit taxing districts like the Pelican Bay MSTBU to self-incorporate if a number of relatively low hurdles are cleared. The state would no longer have to approve cityhood.

As reported by Daily News columnist Brent Batten, this shook up some Naples officials.

One said, "Adoption [of the legislation] would result in decreased revenues to other municipalities ... and to the county." Another pointed out the county would lose $3 million in property tax revenues Pelican Bay now pays to the county general fund and -- horrors -- Naples would have its share of gas tax revenues reduced.

The Daily News weighed in editorially, referring to Pelican Bay: "This is a poor time for any rogue action to break away ... A narrow vision of home rule can broadly impact finances and services beyond any city limits."

No mention of whether incorporation might be good for Pelican Bay.

But we're used to that.

As a donor community, we're used to passing out money to the rest of the county, to giving and not receiving. We're used to having the hours of our library branch slashed. We're used to having repaving of our streets deferred and then deferred again. We're used to pouring money into boondoggles like Oil Well Road.

We're an easy target -- an affluent community at the mercy of ill-informed media and often-predatory commissioners.

Over the years, those commissioners have
- threatened to cut off our recycled water if we were annexed by the City of Naples;
- supported unsuccessful attempts of a developer to build Cap d'Antibes, a high-rise monstrosity bitterly opposed by the residents;
- threatened to access Pelican Bay beaches through private property;
- stripped the community of management responsibility for Clam Bay, turning it over to a county agency;
- threatened to build a fishing pier at the foot of Vanderbilt Beach Road, a misstep that spawned the North Naples Community Alliance, a group now fighting the county over $1.2 million bathrooms on Vanderbilt Beach.

In spite of these affronts, Pelican Bay had nothing to do with SB 692.

We are fighting a number of battles, but not that one.

We are in the midst of a Foundation election that will have a big impact on local governance.

Some residents are involved in county commissioner campaigns.

Others are taking an active role in the election of North Naples Fire District commissioners.

But we are not pushing SB 692 or considering incorporation -- at least for the moment.

In the future, who knows. If the wagons are forced to circle even tighter, if the affronts continue, incorporation might start to look pretty good again.