Maywood to lay off all city employees, dismantle Police Department

The city of Maywood will lay off all city employees and begin contracting police services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department effective July 1, officials said.

In addition to contracting with the Sheriff's Department, the Maywood City Council voted unanimously Monday night to lay off an estimated 100 employees and contract with neighboring Bell, which will handle other city services such as finance, records management, parks and recreation, street maintenance and others. Maywood will be billed about $50,833 monthly, which officials said will save $164,375 annually.

"We will become 100% a contracted city," said Angela Spaccia, Maywood's interim city manager.

Deputies from the East Los Angeles Sheriff's Station will begin patrolling the 1.2-square-mile city by the end of the month, said Capt. Bruce Fogarty of the Sheriff's Contract Law Enforcement Bureau. The annual cost of providing those services for the small city is estimated at $3.6 million, Fogarty said.

At a council meeting Monday night, city leaders said they were forced to dismantle the Police Department and lay off city workers because they lost insurance coverage as a result of excessive police claims filed against the department. They also blamed years of financial abuse and corruption from the previous council.

"We're limited on our choices and limited on what we can do," Councilman Felipe Aguirre told the standing- room-only crowd.

Frustrated and enraged residents blame the council for the city's predicament, and for not following an insurance agency's recommendations, which council members had agreed to last August. The recommendations included hiring a permanent city manager.

Some suggested that city leaders should step down.

"You guys had the power to change it and you didn't," said City Treasurer Lizeth Sandoval, 28, who addressed the council as a resident. "You single-handedly destroyed the city."

Sandoval, a city employee, will be laid off as part of the cuts.

Local activists, who refer to themselves as "A Group for a Better Maywood," announced their intention to recall four of the council members: Felipe Aguirre, Edward Varela, Vice Mayor Veronica Guardado and Mayor Ana Rosa Rizo. The same group sought a similar recall in 2008 and failed.

-- Ruben Vives

More coverage: City hires others to run muncipality

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Jeff]

How does a "city" of 1.2 sq miles have 100 employees?

[Donald Duck]

Ah, doesn't living in a liberal sanctuary city just send a tingle up your leg? Come on in all you illegals and we will welcome you. Not like those nasty evil people in Arizona. Oh, and you do not have to worry about sharing the expense of running the city. We will take care of it.......what do you mean we are broke? Quick, call Arnold, call Barack, call Calderone. No help? O.K., we'll just lay off everybody and probably still have to raise taxes to help pay for nothing! It's the progressive Democrat way, so love it or leave it!

[Tough Love]

And the City residents thing this is bad ???

Its WONDERFUL .... dumping ALL the employees with their associated pensions & benefits ....ZERO further accruals !

Its WONDERFUL ... a new beginning .

A model for other cities strangled by their Unions

[Greg Barton]

La Raza anyone? LOL

[Rose Colombo]

I stood at a political convention in California as a radio talk show host about 1993 and at the press conference, I stated that corruption starts at the top and trickles on down, so what are they going to do to clean up any corruption that occurs in government so they can clean up the corruption trickling on down? The room was silent! The liberal reporters commented sarcastically and the government leaders looked shocked and confused by the question and never answered it. Today, it is obvious, unethical public servants fear the light shining on any darkness that has been covered up for generations and has led to the cities of America being destroyed by government and corporate greed as well as the pilfering and print and spend policies in the White House and their lying in bed with the corporations who feed their campaigns with donations for favorable decisions that make public servants wealthier & more powerful and destroy America, imprison more Americans to fill the beds of privatized cells, and threaten the existence of the middle class city by city. Watch for my book, "Fight Back Legal Abuse" & order on Amazon.com or bn.com scheduled for release July 15th. Protect yourself from legal abuse & unethical attorneys. Many public servants today are sleeping with the enemy!

[bohema]

How can you have 100 city employees for a city that small? 1.2-square miles? They don't need a parks & rec dept, the trash can be picked up by a contractor ... that many employees is the result of years of excess spending.

[db]

Cudahy contracts out their police services to Maywood...does that mean the Sheriff will now patrol Cudahy too?

From a great article on Cudahy:

""Cudahy is a strange little city; some say a scary one. In 2003, city leaders fired the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department — which had policed Cudahy for 14 years, focusing on gang and drug crime — in favor of a nearby municipal police force that recently erupted over public allegations of police brutality and kickbacks to police and city officials from a towing company.

In Cudahy, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has seized almost 20 times more cocaine over the past five years than in Bell, a bordering city of similar size, and the city suffers more crime per capita than small towns nearby. It’s a city with 200 active gang members, where shootings are common though homicide rare — that is, until 11 killings occurred in the wake of the sheriff’s departure in 2003.

Cudahy leaders seem satisfied. Consider the tone-deaf reaction of Cudahy City Manager George Perez in early February, after the news broke on KNBC Channel 4 and in La Opinión, a Spanish-language daily, that the city of Maywood, currently under a $2-million-a-year contract to police Cudahy, was facing a state takeover because the police department — the Maywood-Cudahy Police Department — is so out of control.

“Police problems in Maywood have nothing to do with us,” said Perez. “Our city council is happy, and our citizens are too.”""

http://www.laweekly.com/2007-02-22/news/the-town-the-law-forgot/

[AnJ]

Not to worry, Maywood. Your bad choices for city management will be passed along to the State and from there to the federal government, with bailouts all the way up and down the ladder, so that all the communities in this country that insist on more sensible local governance will get to pay for your idiocy. In fact, that's the new rule of American society - everybody gets to share in the consequences of liberals' bad choices. Frugal people bail out spendthrifts. Legal residents bail out illegals. The law-abiding bail out the criminals. The taxpayers bail out the companies and communities whose unions have bankrupted them. Nobody ever has to say they're sorry, because Uncle Sam will be there with a handout. Only one problem: As the U.S. approaches insolvency, who's going to bail IT out?

[gary bg]

Maybe Chavez will be available to be the next Governator of Caleefornyah.

[mrsharfer]

It would seem that "beaners", legal or illegal can't help but be corrupt. It doesn't matter if it's here or in Mexico. Think it might be genetic??

[Gary]

Those numbers make no sense. $50,833 a month for the new contracts = $609,996 annually. Plus the $164,375 annual savings. Equal $774,371. So, the current spending would be $64,530 a month. And they paid 100 employees with that? That's $645 per month for each employee? Who makes $645 per month?

[Terry89]

Isn't this the same city that flew our American flag upside-down under the mexican flag. Looks like they are getting what they deserve. When you run all of the honest, legal, tax paying citizens out of your city, this is what you get.

[Dr. Acula]

This sounds like great news: they get the needed services and at a cheaper price.

All police services should be contracted out. Then only those police forces that provide the best services at the lowest prices, and who avoid litigation (e.g. wrongful deaths and the like) - i.e. they avoid hiring psychologically unstable thugs, will be the most likely to financially survive.

[Reality Check]

Hey, remember illegal aliens pay taxes too.

And it is racists to ask how much money illegal monies get from the government compared to how much they pay in taxes.

Besides, Obama needs to have Acorn sign these people up to vote.

Acorn can show them how to "self certify" on the voter registration form so that pesky little fact that illegal aliens cannot legally vote can be avoided.

And yes, asking a potential voter to prove he is a U.S. citizen with a birth certificate is racists.

[NowYouKnow]

I didn't know that local government was this smart anywhere in California. Good play!

[Reality Check]

The article never gave the size of the city by population or annual budget.

[the dude]

Isn't this the city that flew the Mexican flag at city hall so proudly proclaiming themselves a " Sanctuary City".......Well why don't they have the people they are providing sanctuary to PAY FOR IT!!!

good for Maywood........!!! and good riddance!!!

[Joe Mama]

Could this possibly be a sactuary city? hmmmmmm

[Reality Check]

The real reason was probably patronage jobs.

By laying off all the employees the jobs lose their union and civil service protections.

Later, when a city staff is re-hired, the political elite can hire their friends and relatives for those jobs without having to worry about union contracts or civil service laws.

[Dorian]

Just a minute here. This is the same city that declared itself a servant to the illegal immigrants coming to California --maybe --just maybe this has something to do with it.

Posted by: tim | June 22, 2010 at 10:46 AM

^^ this.

[nick]

Well having both a female president and vice president might have been a problem, not to mention they are latino.

[tramky]

Why is it that the names of the councilmembers that may go to a recall vote are Hispanic? Is THIS what happens when the practices of Mexico come into the United States--the very governmental fabric is destroyed?

[Garry]

And so it begins...Maywood just lost its independence and freedom! Kudos to the leftwing, liberal, progressives as they just scored a coo! If the city residents won't stand up for their citys independence by voting the lackwits out, then they have only themselves to blame. The irony of it is LA is also broke, lol... Wonder who they'll contract with when the bankers show up? You rob peter to pay paul, it's a definite peters gonna end up broke!

[Garry]

Maybe they should rename the town too, how about Maywood Burrows! It might not be that bad though, the illegals the town seems to love might not stick around now they've broken it. They move onto to a new town, that has the free resources they like. Sounds like they bled maywood dry, rofl

[endmark]

Word on the street is that Bell may follow Maywood in disbanding their police department and contracting out. Seems some investigations might be getting too close to some of the "higher ups" in this little town!