Voters won't decide for almost a year whether Granite, a hillside community at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, should become Salt Lake County's seventh unincorporated township.
But one neighborhood is well on its way to making that decision early -- a move that would nearly split the community in two and be seen as a slap by township supporters who say Granite should remain intact until 2010 when the community can decide its fate at the polls.
The Sandy Planning Commission recommended Thursday annexing the 13-acre Granite neighborhood on Bell Canyon Road, saying it makes little sense to keep a peninsula of unincorporated county pinched by its boundaries.
"It is not perfect," remarked Planning Commissioner Bruce Steadman, glancing up at a map showing the proposed finger-like annexation of 28 properties. "One day I hope it will be -- that this peninsula can be done away with and we can become one unified neighborhood."
The recommendation now goes before the Sandy City Council, which has scheduled a public hearing for Tuesday.
Granite officials successfully petitioned the county last month to hold an election to decide whether the east-side enclave should become a township -- a designation that would allow it to protect its boundaries much like a city.
But now, a proposed annexation threatens to shrink that unincorporated suburb and leave its northern half connected to the southern half by only a narrow strip of land.
"This almost cuts the Granite area in half," argued Jeff Silvestrini, past president of the Association of Community Councils Together, who said the annexation would violate the "spirit" of a new state law that spells out the process for creating townships.
Yet Jason Nicholl, a homeowner in the neighborhood, urged the planning commission to sanction the split.
"We, the people who actually live in this area, would like to exercise the same degree of self-determination that the people of Granite want to exercise for themselves," Nicholl said.
While the planning commission found the annexation worthwhile -- pointing out the practicality of having the entire community served by the same patrol officers, the same garbage trucks and the same snow plows -- its decision was based on planning.
Next week, the City Council will consider the second part of the annexation: politics.
