By Giovanni Radtke | [email protected]

Some Granite community members want to form their own town, but Sandy City lawmakers' decision to annex land from the unincorporated area may stymie their efforts.

The Sandy City Council unanimously approved the annexation of 22 unincorporated parcels from the Granite region at two meetings in April. Granite residents expressed their opposition to the Sandy legislators’ decision to annex their properties into the city limits during public hearings.

Granite – located at the gateway to Little Cottonwood Canyon on Sandy’s eastern border – is a small community with about 1,000 inhabitants. Some Granite locals are worried that joining Sandy could impact the area's rural feel.

“We happen to like our little community of Granite, we like the rural atmosphere,” Granite Community Council member Gorm Klungervik said during public comment on April 7. “We like people to have their horses and their cows and their buffalos even, and when we get annexed into Sandy City, that all may change.”

Community leaders in the unincorporated area sponsored a feasibility study, which was released in mid-March. The report found that it was possible for Granite to incorporate, but it was based on maps that “may not reflect annexations that have and may occur in the near future.”

“The Granite Community Council has done everything they can to give us a real feasibility report so we can become our own city, and I believe this annexation is trying to thwart those efforts that they made,” Granite resident Jeremey Anderson said at the April 7 public hearing. “Because, quite frankly, if you guys annex one of these properties, then all the work done by the Granite Community Council will be null and void, and they would have to redraw all their maps.”

In 2024, the state legislature passed a law that would automatically absorb unincorporated areas into bordering cities in July 2027, unless residents living in unincorporated areas decide to establish their own municipality. The Granite advisory board wanted to bring incorporation up for a vote in November, but it may not have time to produce an updated map to make the ballot, Vaughn Cox, chairman of the Granite Community Council, said at the April 7 hearing.

“This meeting is not really about annexations; rather, it is about stopping the incorporation of the city of Granite,” he said. “Annexations are only a means to that end. The city of Granite is on track to be on the ballot for this November’s election, and Sandy City wants to stop it. It wants to stop a democratic election.”

Most of the property owners caught up in annexation signed water agreements with Sandy stipulating they would fall under the city’s jurisdiction at a later date. Some homeowners in Granite, however, told Sandy’s elected officials they had no alternative.

“You guys are a monopoly up in our area when it comes to water,” homeowner and former Sandy resident Douglas Knight said. “I have no other choice, I can’t go up to Mount Olympus and have them deliver thousands of gallons of water to me every week.”

“I don’t know how I feel about coming back to Sandy City or being in Granite, but my fundamental thing is I just want the choice,” Knight added. “We’re gonna vote as a community, and I’m willing to go for whatever the community votes for.”