(Photo by Brandon Hunt - CC BY 2.0)

The Skyline Ranch neighborhood in San Tan Valley.

A group of San Tan Valley residents has taken the first steps to incorporation.

The Vote San Tan Valley Steering Committee filed a boundary map and a petition to collect signatures to put the issue on the ballot, with the Pinal County Elections Department last week.

“You can never anticipate for the opportunities in the future you would probably lose out on if you don’t have the ability to control how you are represented, and that’s the thing we are really going to have here,” said committee member Rey Torres.

San Tan Valley is currently an unincorporated area in Pinal County. The proposed boundaries of the new town or city would be “Germann on the north, Meridian on the west, Phillips and various smaller streets on the south, and CAP canal and Attaway on the east,” according to a press release from Vote San Tan Valley.

A law signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Doug Ducey paved the way for the incorporation effort. Previously, neighboring Florence had vetoed San Tan Valley’s attempt to incorporate.

The new law allows aspiring unincorporated areas with at least 15,000 residents that are larger than neighboring cities to move forward despite objections from smaller nearby cities. 

“There’s nothing more American than self-determination,” Torres said. “I think we fought a war for independence on that same basis and self determination is the primary motivating factor for what we’re all involved in this for.”

The group has the next five months to collect an estimated 10,000 signatures to trigger a public vote. The exact number of signatures is at least 10 percent of the voters within the proposed boundaries.