Fairwood has now said no twice to cityhood and once to annexing to the City of Renton.

What’s left is a county government that’s forced by state growth-management laws to get out of the business of running urban areas.

Annexation was failing 55 percent to 45 percent after initial count in Tuesday’s general election.

The numbers grew but the percentage different changed very little following Wednesday’s count.

The county Elections Office will release updated returns at 4:30 p.m. each weekday, with the election certified on Nov. 23.

The defeat was a surprise and a shock to those who have worked to annex Fairwood and its roughly 27,000 residents to Renton.

“I think people were just burned out,” said annexation supporter Linda Sarturnak Wednesday, because of the two efforts to incorporate Fairwood.

“They just didn’t want to deal with it and instead stay the way we are,” she said. She said because the November elections were so contentious that voters were feeling “overwhelmed.”

The Renton City Council purposely placed the annexation measure on the November ballot to give the Fairwood community a year or so to settle down from the incorporation debates.

Sarturnak doesn’t know whether there will be another effort to annex to Renton. It’s possible incorporation proponents could try again, too.

Scott Helfen, a Fairwood business owner, opposed annexation; he was one of three people who wrote the opposition statement in the voters pamphlet. He went into election day not knowing what to expect; he said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the outcome.

Helfen favors incorporation, but he doesn’t think any new effort to incorporate or annex is going to happen for another year or two.

“Everyone wants to take a breather,” he said.

Fairwood has three camps in the debate about its future: Those who favor cityhood, those who favor annexation and those who like Fairwood the way it is. That third camp is the swing vote, he said, first voting against incorporation, then voting against annexation.

But, it’s likely that county services will continue to decline, forcing Fairwood to once again face a decision about its future, he said. “The future is unknown in that direction,” he said.

In the meantime, he’s “cautiously optimistic,” as new businesses move into Fairwood’s business core.

Also worrisome, he said, is the possible annexation of West Hill, which could be a “huge drag” on the costs of infrastructure Renton would have to pay, he said, because West Hill doesn’t provide the income to offset those costs.

King County Executive Dow Constantine made the county’s goal clear on Wednesday.

“A transition in governance will be more sustainable for residents of the urban unincorporated areas, and that has to remain the long-term goal,” said Constantine. “Residents may want to take a breather on the question of how to accomplish it, but under state law, and financial reality, the status quo is not an option.”

It’s Renton’s policy to only act on annexations initiated by residents in the affected area, rather than initiate such a move on its own.

The City of Renton had already prepared a financial plan to transition services from the county to the city, with the intent of hiring about 80 new employees to provide services to Fairwood.

Some opponents of annexation have said Renton needed to annex Fairwood to help balance its budget, Mayor Denis Law said Wednesday morning. But that’s not the case, he said.

“We have a balanced budget for 2011 and 2012 and Fairwood was not in the mix,” he said.

The city, he said, has “remained committed to each (annexation) area paying for its own way.”

In Fairwood’s case the city had prepared a supplemental budget amendment if Fairwood annexes, with revenue for services coming from property taxes and sales taxes in the incorporation area, Law said. But those revenues were not enough to pay for all services, so the city was relying on a sales-tax credit from the state for 10 years to help cover the difference.

This year was “the optimum time” for Fairwood to annex “since future ability to utilize the state support will be lost if West Hill ends up annexing in 2012, which is possible.”

It was also an optimum time, Law said, because “it should be very clear to the residents that the county is serious about reducing services. The long-term impacts to the community with rising crime issues and continued deterioration to infrastructure will be significant,” he said.

The King County Sheriff’s Office provides police services in Fairwood, Skyway and other unincorporated areas. The county is facing multimillion-dollar cuts in its general fund budget; the bulk of that money goes to criminal justice agencies.

The county had hoped to backfill some of that shortfall with money from Proposition 1, which would have raised the sales tax two tenths of a percent to help fund those agencies. Renton would have received some of the revenue, too. However, the proposition also failed at the polls.

The idea behind placing the measure on the ballot was to give voters a voice in making the decisions about what to cut, according to King County Council members, including Julia Patterson, who represents part of Renton.

In a statement Wednesday, Patterson and other council members responsible for writing the budget said the County Council will balance the county’s budget for 2011.

“But everyone needs to know the painful choices we will need to make to achieve a balanced budget – choices that will change the face of criminal justice and human services in King County,” they wrote.

The Sheriff’s Office is planning to close its Maple Valley precinct in a cost-saving move. However, the Sheriff’s Office expects to make more use of the Fairwood storefront precinct as a “satellite” office.

If Fairwood remains unincorporated, residents won’t see any decrease in patrols, said Sgt. John Urquhart, a sheriff’s spokesman. However, those deputies on patrol will have to do follow-up investigations on property crimes, as detectives are being reassigned to patrol duties, he said.

Also, although the plans are not firmed up yet, Urquhart said Sheriff’s Office likely won’t have any school resource officers or dedicated deputies in the storefront office.