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Sandy » Islanders.
That's what they called themselves when Salt Lake County, in the mid-1990s, offered to let Sandy swallow up scores of homes in unincorporated parcels that had become surrounded by the city.
Sporting Hawaiian shirts, hundreds of homeowners called on the then-County Commission to hold back the tides of city life. And the commission listened.
"You couldn't have pried their cold dead fingers off of county services," recalled Salt Lake County Councilman Randy Horiuchi, a commissioner at the time.
So Sandy now is home to more than 30 unincorporated islands -- some no larger than three or four houses -- that are within city limits but rely on the county for basic services such as snow plowing and trash pickup.
They are known as the "East Isles" to the county sanitation director Pam Roberts, whose black bins appear seemingly at random within Sandy. They line a single neighborhood near 700 East on 8280 South, but not the streets nearby. They stand four in a row on the north side of 8600 South near 800 East, then skip a house before picking up a fifth property down the road.
It's a peculiar patchwork of county living right in the middle of Sandy, where some unincorporated neighborhoods still aren't reached by streetlights or sidewalks.
And that's how Robert Lewis likes it.
The widower lives in an unincorporated oasis on 8600 South, where one side of the
"We just never have wanted to have Sandy City looking in on us all the time," Lewis said. "This is better living than in Sandy."
Nowhere in Salt Lake County do the worlds of city and county collide more frequently than in Sandy. In fact, an entire unincorporated community of 6,000 residents (known as White City) lies at the center of this south-valley suburb with its own water supply, its own community council, its own police precinct. That island has resisted, sometimes vehemently, any effort to erode its township boundaries.
And then there are 33 smaller isles, where the county's plows, garbage trucks and even police officers have to use Sandy's streets to reach the residents they serve.
"Obviously, the city doesn't have a forced-annexation policy," said Nick Duerksen, assistant community-development director for Sandy. "If we did, we wouldn't have those islands."
The isles formed decades ago when Sandy, then just a tiny town measuring one square mile at 9000 South and State Street, began to grow. Its boundaries branched out farther and farther, leaving unincorporated holes in places where one neighborhood joined the city but another didn't.
The county proposed a "global settlement" in the mid-1990s to do away with those islands. But residents resisted by the hundreds, according to Horiuchi, stopping the agreement with a campaign characterized by those Hawaiian shirts.
"It probably made sense then, and probably makes sense today, from a service standpoint to put some of these islands at rest," Horiuchi said. But, emotionally, people wanted to stick with the county.
Even so, Sandy is slowly spreading.
The city now requires new development to annex into Sandy before tapping into its water system. And city officials, citing "self-determination," have proven willing to accept requests from homes and businesses that want to splinter from the unincorporated county.
One unincorporated burb, Granite, now is headed toward a November election that will decide whether its community of more than 2,000 residents on the eastern edge of Sandy can better protect its borders as the county's seventh township.
And yet, the boundaries between county and city can be difficult to define. The black garbage bins are a telltale sign. Sandy's are blue. But little else distinguishes properties such as Karlenna Deem's on 11400 South near 1700 East from those in the city. The differences are so subtle, in fact, that Deem considers her land a hybrid of the two.
"To tell you the honest truth, it's kind of like we are Sandy City and the county," said Deem, whose family originally stuck with the county because of its less-restrictive building policies. "Is there a notable difference? I can't really say."
But there are "inefficiencies," according to Duerksen. Trash trucks travel farther between cans. Snowplows pick up their blades between streets. Unified Police Department officers drive through Sandy to answer nonemergency calls.
Trouble is, those inefficiencies are hard to quantify. The county's sanitation division -- which collects garbage for 80,000 customers -- plans to study those costs this year. But officials doubt the islands are putting a financial strain on the county with trucks already in the area serving Cottonwood Heights and White City.
"We're hoping to have some good data by the end of this year," Roberts said. "If there are ways to improve our efficiency and keep those rates low for our customers, we need to know it."
But even if the routes are more expensive, Public Works Director Linda Hamilton said the county isn't going to stop services.
"We will continue to provide services to them," Hamilton said, "as long as that is what the residents want."
Violet Middleton wants that. She has lived on 8280 South for four decades and says lower taxes have kept her in the county. She is not interested in paying the franchise fees that Sandy charges for electricity, natural gas and television service.
But will that commitment to county living change when officials send out the first law-enforcement bills early this year? Homeowners in unincorporated neighborhoods can expect to pay an extra $174 annually for police protection. Businesses, industries, even churches and charities will pay more, too.
In some unincorporated areas -- such as Granite -- homeowners might actually see their overall tax bill shrink by hundreds of dollars a year by joining Sandy, according to a tax-and-fee calculator compiled by the city and undisputed by the county.
Horiuchi suspects that some "islanders" -- faced with a new police fee -- might think twice about life outside Sandy and hang up their Hawaiian shirts for a lower tax bill.
Even Lewis is having second thoughts.
"The county is going crazy on taxation," he said. "I'm thinking seriously about that ... about joining Sandy City because of taxation."
But Lewis hasn't decided yet. For now, he's happy living on his island.
