A City Outsources Everything. Sky Doesn’t Fall

NYT ^ | 07/19/10 | DAVID STREITFELD

[TigerLikesRooster]

July 19, 2010

A City Outsources Everything. Sky Doesn’t Fall.

By DAVID STREITFELD

MAYWOOD, Calif. — Not once, not twice, but three times in the last two weeks, Andrew Quezada says, he was stopped and questioned by the authorities here.

Mr. Quezada, a high school student who does volunteer work for the city, pronounced himself delighted.

“I’m walking along at night carrying an overstuffed bag,” he said, describing two of the incidents. “I look suspicious. This shows the sheriff’s department is doing its job.”

Chalk up another Maywood resident who approves of this city’s unusual experience in municipal governing. City officials last month fired all of Maywood’s employees and outsourced their jobs.

While many communities are fearfully contemplating extensive cuts, Maywood says it is the first city in the nation in the current downturn to take an ax to everyone.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[foundedonpurpose]

So this is reported by the New york times, the city is in california..... strange times!

[YankeeReb]

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. You’d think a city could privatize a lot of what they do, eliminating expensive union benefits and pensions.

[TigerLikesRooster]

The threat of annihilation is a powerful motivator, but let’s see how long liberals stays on this new wave. There would be still many bigger local governments which would resist downsizing at all costs. I suspect that the bigger they are, the harder they resist, playing ‘too big to fail’ card.

[Manly Warrior]

Okay, so the city no longer has a payroll etc, so they pay a contracting company to do the same work, the workers they hire (many of the orignal city employees, no doubt) get a lower pay rate, teh contractor adds in overhead (in some cases that rate is well over 100% of the cost of doing the actual work) and somehow the city taxpayers are getting a better deal? Often nepotism/cronyism is behind the curtain(sarc).

I’d like to see the contract/cost breakdown-so should the city taxpayers! I highly doubt they are getting the relief they think....

I work in defense contracting, and I know that many contractors, universities etc add in huge “overhead” or “burdened” rates (to cover admin, taxes, retirement, health care costs etc). These rates are approved by the Feds and are public record items.

Best;

[Roux]

The “100 thousand cops on the street” and money to Homeland security created or expanded a lot of small town police departments. It’s been a huge mistake. A small town near us went from just a police chief with one car to a chief, asst chief and two officers plus equipment.

Eventually the two officers and chief were arrested for stealing 4 wheelers and selling drugs. When you don’t have much to do I guess you start getting in trouble.

[SuziQ]

"Jerald Bennett was on his way to the $2 seniors’ lunch at the bustling Maywood recreational center when another car made an illegal turn and almost rammed him. “It seems like that sort of thing is happening more and more,” he said. “They’re not patrolling the streets.”

So since this guy expected things to go badly, he's blaming the outsourcing for that idiot driver's actions? Street patrols wouldn't have stopped the illegal turn, they'd only have pulled over the driver, and that's only if they'd been right there at the time of the turn.

It was interesting that the Old Grey Lady included the pic of the Little League opening ceremonies with the caption that even though the town is out of money, opening ceremonies still occurred. Do they think that the town pays for the Little League? I guess none of the folks on the NY Times staff have little kids who play baseball, or they'd know that Little League is a PRIVATE organization, so the financial situation of the town is irrelevant to the group's activities.

[Blue Ink]

“Sky does not fall.” Snide, smug Northeast b-—ards. Maywood, CA was a nice little AMERICAN city twenty-five years ago that was destroyed by its current overwhelmingly illegal population importing Mexican-style corrupt thug government that stole every dime. Yeah, the sky didn’t fall. It’s only shameful, that’s all. All Californians should be humiliated. I am. Another American town ceded to another country. Washington does nothing. New York applauds. Yawn.