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It’s official.

The Naples City Council wants the city’s beach parking stickers back, and they aren’t taking no for an answer.

“The underlining theme I’ve been trying to get at is to regain our identity,” Councilman Gary Price said. “It’s big things like parking garages and little things like beach stickers. This is something that identifies us as living in the city.”

Price brought up the topic of beach stickers during Wednesday’s council meeting, after seeing a copy of the proposed countywide sticker.

The new sticker would replace the current white one with black letters, city Finance Director Ann Marie Ricardi said in a memo to Naples City Manager Bob Lee.

“As a reminder, city and county beach stickers are the same, because we now all follow the same parking rules,” she wrote.

That didn’t sit well with council members. Some protested the combined sticker.

Until earlier this year, city residents had their own parking sticker, Ricardi said. The sticker, which featured the Naples Pier and a sunset, was phased out when the state Department of Environmental Protection said everyone needed to have equal access to the beach.

Naples residents have since been issued countywide stickers, which provide access to beaches in Naples, Marco Island and elsewhere in Collier County.

The proposed sticker would function in the same capacity countywide, except it has the words “Naples” and “Marco Island” on it.

But for the majority of council members, that isn’t enough.

“We don’t want to be all those things,” Price said.

Councilman John Sorey told the council he supported bringing back a Naples-specific beach pass, especially since he believes the city should be monitoring who is using the beaches.

Sorey said separate beach stickers would mean he — or any resident for that matter — could walk through a lot and see who was parking at the Naples beaches.

In the past, Sorey said, 70 percent of the people visiting Naples beaches were residents of the unincorporated area.

“I feel strongly that the county should reimburse the city,” he said. “I have a problem with city residents subsidizing county residents.”

Both Councilman Bill Willkomm and Councilwoman Penny Taylor agreed.

“I like it,” Willkomm said. “I feel like the County Commission is taking advantage of us.”

Mayor Bill Barnett, however, said that it shouldn’t matter who uses the beaches.

Currently the city is reimbursed for the number of parking spaces in the city. Sorey said the city is in the process of negotiating a new agreement.

In her memo, Ricardi said she plans to present a new agreement regarding the beach passes to county officials in November.

Ricardi said Friday she was looking into how much it would cost to run off the old beach stickers to make them available to city residents. But Barnett said he thinks issuing separate passes to city residents could become too costly.

“I have a sneaky suspicion that the cost of having our own pass is going to be an issue,” Barnett said.

Barnett was the lone voice among council members Wednesday who said he liked the proposed parking pass.

Barnett said he didn’t think residents would mind having the same beach sticker as unincorporated-area residents, as long as the sticker was attractive.

But Price disagreed.

“It’s our only identifier,” he said. “One of the badges of honor (of living in the city) is to have a city of Naples beach sticker.”