Granite County commission votes to keep road‑ownership layer off public GIS viewer, schedules work session

The Granite County Commission voted Jan. 13 to keep detailed road‑ownership attribution turned off in the county’s public GIS viewer while retaining the data for internal use.

Commissioners, county staff and members of the public spent more than an hour debating whether showing county ownership and maintenance status on a publicly accessible map would create legal exposure and mislead buyers and visitors. Matt, the GIS presenter, said the viewer could show county, city, Forest Service and private roads with color coding, but staff and commissioners warned the map could be treated as definitive by out‑of‑state users and realtors.

“County Road ownership information will be turned, quote, unquote, off,” the GIS presenter said while noting other non‑ownership metadata (road name, suffix, address ranges and seasonal‑access notes) could still be published. Commissioners emphasized that ownership, maintenance and access are often distinct: a road marked on county records may extend beyond the maintained section, end at a cattle guard or pass through private gates.

Commissioner (unnamed) argued publication could prompt litigation: “When people from out of state…they look at the easy information that's available, and they're like, ‘oh, it’s County Road,’ and that's how far they look,” and warned it could lead to trespass and disputes. Another participant pointed to ongoing litigation (Haffner v. Mayer), where printed county road atlases were used as evidence, and said disclaimers might not prevent legal challenges.

The commission approved a motion to keep ownership attribution internal, authorized a draft public version that omits ownership fields, and asked staff to convene a work session with Linda, Blaine, the sheriff’s office and the GIS contractor to review a draft. The work session was tentatively scheduled for a post‑meeting work session on Jan. 27 at about 12:30 p.m.

The draft public view will include road name, address ranges and access notes (for example, “seasonal access only” or “4‑wheel drive required”), but not database fields that explicitly flag an owner as “county,” “Forest Service” or “private.” The GIS presenter said he would remove ownership attribution from the public dataset and coordinate a live editing/demo with staff and Civic Lens before publication.

The county did not adopt a final public map at the meeting; commissioners instructed staff to produce a draft for the work session and then revisit whether any ownership fields should be reinstated with clearer disclaimers.

What happens next: staff will prepare a draft public GIS viewer that hides ownership fields, circulate it to the core user group, and present it at the scheduled work session for further instruction.