Today, Maywood is America's (and possibly the world's) first completely outsourced city. Where other local authorities might privatise their traffic wardens or binmen, Maywood's council has gone the whole hog: sacking everyone from school crossing guards and parking wardens, to street maintenance workers, park wardens, librarians and even the clerical staff in city hall. The number of people it now has on its payroll?
A big, fat zero.
In the purge of city employees, which happened at the end of June, about 60 people lost their jobs. Most of those redundancies hit the scandal-ridden police department. In the previous five years, it had had to settle around 30 misconduct lawsuits, for alleged offences ranging from civil rights violations to rape by officers to unlawful killing, with compensation totalling $20m – double the entire city's annual budget.
In their place came the friendly cops that warmly greeted Hector on 4 July. They are members of the LA County Sheriff's Department, which agreed to be paid roughly $4m a year to patrol Maywood's streets, a figure significantly lower than the previous police budget, even before you factor its lawsuits into consideration.
Despite the public money it saved, the outsourcing project was highly controversial. When it was announced, residents feared anarchy would follow; old people thought they would be mugged in the streets; local storekeepers wondered if anyone who would stop them from being robbed; families presumed parks and libraries would close. "You have single-handedly destroyed this city," the about-to-be-sacked city treasurer told council members, during the acrimonious meeting where the outsourcing scheme was unveiled.
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