With the second attempt to form a City of Fairwood a failure, the next decision for this community of about 26,000 people is whether to annex to Renton.

For the last week or so, the vote tally has shown little change from the initial total on Election Night, which had incorporating trailing. On Thursday, the tally was 45.36 percent for incorporation and 54.64 opposed.

The loss was more pronounced than the one in 2006, when incorporation failed by just 270 votes.

The Renton Reporter has been unable to reach a spokesman for the pro-incorporation Fairwood Municipal Initiative for comment.

However, the group on its Web site indicates that most incorporations have taken “a few votes to finally succeed. Will we get another chance? Sadly no, as Renton is targeting Fairwood for annexation and the process had already started prior to this vote.”

The Web site goes on to say “we can be proud of running an honest campaign based on FACTS from expert financial analysis. If the voters ultimately chose to reject it, so be it.”

Renton, according to the group’s Web site, “is ill-equipped to handle even its current population and budget mess… adding Fairwood will strain the city even further.”

Renton’s general annexation policy is that areas wishing to join the city must initiate the process. In assessing the whether to accept an annexation, the city will consider what impact adding the area would have on its current citizens and services.

Two annexations of the Fairwood area have been proposed, one that includes just its commercial core – the Red Mill annexation – and the other the entire Fairwood area – Choose Renton.

Both annexations have been on hold until the fate of a City of Fairwood was known. The Renton City Council has accepted petitions that will allow both annexations to proceed through the process.

However, neither proposal has been forwarded to the Washington state Boundary Review Board for King County. Because of a state Supreme Court ruling, the board no longer has the authority to change the boundaries of a proposed annexation area, although such changes could be made at the local level.

Choose Renton’s spokesman, Bryce Nelson, has been active in presenting the counter-argument to Fairwood incorporation.

“I’m glad to see that people made the right decision last week,” he said. “We worked extremely hard and told the truth about the financial challenges Fairwood would face, and people obviously decided in the end to base their vote on the facts, rather than unrealistically optimistic assumptions and scare tactics.

“It just goes to show that if you tell the truth, you’ll be successful,” he said.

He expressed hope “incorporation supporters will respect the will of the public and allow annexation of Fairwood into Renton to proceed with as little delay as possible.”

Now is the time to choose Renton, he said.

“Let’s get to work as soon as we can on having Fairwood receive Renton’s higher level of service and lower taxes, and let’s do it sooner rather than later,” he said.

The election results are posted at about 4:30 p.m. weekdays. Election results will be certified on Nov. 24.