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Mike Minozzi knows a thing or two about incorporation.

Minozzi, who serves as chairman of the Marco Island City Council, has lived on Marco since before the city became just that.

He’s seen the transformation, and on Wednesday night he told Pelican Bay community members that he would almost always recommend incorporation.

“The fact is, you can, with less money, do a lot of things. The main reason we were able to do (everything we’ve done), was we were managing our own destiny,” Minozzi said. “For Marco Island, it was a very, very important step to incorporate. It was a lot of work in the very beginning, but we are very fortunate.”

Minozzi was invited Wednesday night to answer questions as part of an ongoing series of town hall meetings to discuss incorporation of the North Naples community. The meetings are meant to outline the pros and cons of becoming a city, and Wednesday’s meeting gave residents a chance to ask questions of someone who has been through the process.

Marco Island residents voted to incorporate in 1997, more than 15 years after the community first began discussing the possibility. The vote was close, with about 51 percent of the community’s registered voters voting in favor on incorporating.

It took six tries before voters decided to incorporate. The first vote, taken in 1980, failed 516 votes to 2,010 votes; while the fifth vote, a mail-in ballot in 1993, failed 2,348 votes to 3,368 votes.

Minozzi said that, by 1997, residents had had enough and were ready to take fate into their own hands.

“The county had simply, I’m talking about totally, neglected us,” Minozzi said.

By 1997, Minozzi said the roads and drainage systems were in desperate need of upgrades, and county zoning standards at the time meant an increased density on the small island. The straw that broke the camel’s back, Minozzi said, was when $2 million set aside to repair the city’s bridges was taken away and used for other road work throughout the county.

“Marco Island had been totally, totally neglected by Collier County,” at that point, Minozzi said.

Since incorporating, the city has created its own police and fire departments, purchased its own utility system and is installing sewers throughout the city.

But Minozzi said the city’s crowning jewel is its lower tax rate.

“Since we’ve become a city our taxes have been cut, and we’ve reduced our millage rate,” he said Wednesday night. “We’ve reduced our out-of-pocket taxes each year for the last five years. While our main source of income is the ad valorem taxes, it still only represents about half of what we spend.”

While Minozzi’s presentation showed off all the positives of incorporation, Pelican Bay residents and owners in attendance expressed their desire to hear a differing opinion.

“I was of the opinion we were going to hear another side of incorporation,” Pelican Bay resident Bob Sanchez said.

Many of the residents who stepped up to the microphone Wednesday night said they needed more information before they could decide whether to authorize a feasibility study, which is needed before the community can proceed with incorporation.

“I’m more inclined to go through with the process,” Pelican Bay resident Charles Bodo said. “But I think if a straw poll was taken now, it would go down.”

Previous attempts to incorporate or annex into the city of Naples have failed, said Gerhard Seblatnigg, chairman of the incorporation steering committee.

Located on the city of Naples’ northern border, Pelican Bay sits on about 2,500 acres west of U.S. 41 and has 6,700 property owners, more than 14,000 residents and about 5,800 registered voters. The community is built out and is mostly residential.

The most recent incorporation talks began about a year after the city of Naples told Pelican Bay it would not annex the community into Naples’ city limits.

Pelican Bay officials took the first steps toward incorporation in November, when they hired Florida Gulf Coast University’s Florida Institute of Government and LaRue Planning and Management Services to research incorporation. The contract was for more than $13,000, of which the Pelican Bay Foundation paid for about half.

If residents choose to move forward with incorporation in 2009, they would need to have all of the information concerning incorporation available to the state by December.

The next incorporation town hall meeting is set for 7 p.m. March 18 at the Hammock Oak Community Center in Pelican Bay.