In what amounted to a referendum on public services provided by Salt Lake County, residents of the county's six townships - Copperton, Emigration Canyon, Kearns, Magna, Millcreek and White City - resoundingly chose to maintain the status quo.

They don't want to form their own city, or be absorbed by another, or shed their township title. The results of a pair of public opinion surveys, released this week, reveal that residents in each and every township prefer things just the way they are.

The surveys conclude a two-year, $350,000 study made necessary by a 2005 legislative decree that extended until 2010 the life of the townships, which are protected from piecemeal annexations under a mid-1990s state law designed to safeguard the county government's municipal services tax base.

Adjacent cities had been cherrypicking the commercial cores of unincorporated areas, making it difficult for the county to afford to provide municipal services for the residential areas that remained. So state lawmakers moved to temporarily protect the low-hanging fruit, and the townships, which have a say in community planning decisions but are governed by the County Council, were born.

Now, the surveys show that the residents of these hybrid bastions have coalesced into communities with a strong sense of place and a stronger aversion to change.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents to a mail survey of property owners indicate they want to remain a part of a township. Annexing into an adjacent city is a distant second choice at 15 percent.

A follow-up telephone poll, which included property owners and renters, was also conclusive. The survey reveals 49 percent - a plurality of 33 percent - favor the existing state of affairs.

That should settle it, at least for now. The rest should be a formality.

The townships shouldn't be set permanently in stone. It would be wise to simply extend the sunset provision and revisit the issue in a decade or so to determine if public opinions have changed. But the Legislature should honor the residents' present wishes, continue to protect the townships from predatory annexation and see how these hybrids grow.