Talk:East Naples, Florida

County seat is in unincorporated East Naples

Unless the city of Naples has done some annexation, the county governmental complex at 3301 E. Tamiami Trail, Naples, FL 34112, which is the county seat, is in unincorporated East Naples, Florida. The post office does not recognize East Naples as a separate place. After moving from Everglades City, Florida the county first gave its address as 3301 Tamiami Trail, East Naples. Then it put a comma after East and put it on the same line as the street address. Then it moved the East to between 3301 and Tamiami Trail. Being the county seat is important to a city or town and most that are let the world know that they are. The City of Naples does not. Its website makes no mention of its being the county seat. clariosophic 20:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I did some digging on this. Neither the Naples website nor the Collier County website identify where the county seat is located, but the following Reliable Sources all list Naples (not East Naples) as the county seat:

• National Association of Counties
• Florida Association of Counties
• University of South Florida, Florida Center for Instructional Technology
• Enterprise Florida (public-private partnership)
• Naples Daily News

(Note the first reference, since it is GR6, one of Wikipedia's designated Geographic References, and it does not identify East Naples as a community in the county at all, let alone the county seat.)

The U.S. Census Bureau does not recognize East Naples as a CDP. (List of cities, towns, villages and CDP's in Florida, 2000).

I will sit on this for a while, but I plan to remove the reference to East Naples as the county seat before the end of the year. Horologium (talk) 01:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Let me quote from The Florida Handbook, 2007-2008, 31st Biennial Edition, compiled by Allen Morris and Joan Perry Morris, Peninsular Publishing Company: Tallahassee, 2007, p. 480, in the section on County Seats:

"Collier County government offices moved into a new courthouse in East Naples (emphasis supplied) on Spetember 30, 1962, completing a transfer from Everglades which began with elections in 1959. East Naples had been the choice of Collier's voters in a runoff with Everglades. Immokalee and Naples (emphasis supplied) were eliminated in the first balloting."

Here is a brief biography on Allen Morris from an FSU website that gives some insight into his qualifications.[1]

Another, not nearly as prestigious source, is Florida Almanac, 2000-2001, by Del Marth and Martha J, Martha, edited by Bernie McGovern, Pelican Publishing: Greta, Louisiana, 200, p. 115, in its article on Collier County, which merely says: "County seat is in East Naples."

Moving a county seat in Florida is a long and complicated process and requires a vote of the people. I find that no evidence of any such vote since the one moving it to East Naples. The only possible exception to this that I could see would be if the City of Naples had annexed the county government complex in East Naples into its city limits. I can find no evidence that this has happened.

I never asserted that East Naples was a CDP. It is only an unincorporated place. Anyway CDPs are a creation of the Census Bureau and aren't legal entities under Florida law. Florida does not require a county seat to be in an incorporated place. I may have missed something but I didn't see any reference in the Naples News site about the county seat. The FAC and NAC just parrot the information each county sends in. I don't see any information in the other cites that I would consider definitive. The big question would be: If Naples is now the county seat, how did that happen? I don't see any evidence that it has happened. There would certainly be a paper trail and the City of Naples would be boasting that it is the county seat. As I stated above, the Collier County government has over time switched its address from East Naples to Naples. The street address is the same. There's no East Naples post office. The zip codes in the Naples area disregard the city limits. The AAA map I got today shows the Collier County Courthouse and Sheriff's office outside the city limits of Naples. Map of Naples, Florida, Precision Maps, Pinellas Park, Florida, 2005. clariosophic (talk) 22:03, 10 December 2007 (UTC)