3 Cities’ Woes Make Them 1 : 3-Way Merger of Some Services Would Save Money for All

Three Southeast cities that have a lot in common, including budget problems, are thinking of combining some of their services to save money.

Some officials of the communities--Huntington Park, Maywood and Bell--want to go even further and merge into one city, but for now most of their efforts are aimed at combining such services as cleaning and painting streets, picking up trash, trimming trees, and processing building plans.

“To combine things we have separate crews for makes the most sense,” said Richard V. Loya, a Huntington Park city councilman. “Isn’t it silly to have a crew putting stripes down along Gage Avenue that just stops when it gets to Bell? Why not just keep going? It will save taxpayers money in the long run.”

A six-member committee, consisting of two City Council members from each city, has been formed to discuss which services could best be consolidated to save money.

“If we are going to survive as our own cities, this is the only way,” said Bell Councilman George Cole, committee chairman.

The cities have meager budgets by most standards. Each has a General Fund budget of $11 million or less and relies heavily on state funding. Maywood is the most dependent, receiving nearly half of its $4-million General Fund revenues from the state.

The three mid-sized cities--located in a seven-square-mile cluster along the Los Angeles River--are similar in other ways as well.

Most residents are Latino. The cities are densely populated, with a high percentage of low-income residents. The residential neighborhoods are typically crowded with oversized apartment buildings or small, single-story stucco houses in which several families pool resources to pay the rent. And in the three shopping districts--dominated by beauty salons, discount shoe stores and bakeries--business is conducted mostly in Spanish.

The cities also are facing a proliferation of gangs, which has driven up the number of crimes such as burglaries and assaults, officials said.

After the state budget crisis resulted in funding cuts to local municipalities, officials in the three cities scaled back on street and sewer improvements, recreation programs, and social services such as gang prevention and drug rehabilitation programs.

“If these cities were a person, they would be on life support,” Huntington Park Councilman Luis Hernandez said.

The city managers say they are unsure of the final financial fallout from the state cuts, but all three cities recently approved taxes on utility users to generate more revenue.

In Maywood, for example, the council this month approved a 5% utility users tax, which is expected to generate about $350,000 a year. Officials say the money will be used to fill four longstanding vacancies in the Police Department.

Officials said they became interested in combining services after learning that an agreement between Bell and Maywood last February is saving thousands of dollars.

Maywood will save $30,000 this year and Bell will save about $3,000 by hiring one contractor to service police cars and other city vehicles in both communities, their city managers estimated. Officials decided to try the joint contract after Maywood’s staff mechanic retired.

The cities then formed a Joint Services Committee of Loya and Mayor Raul Perez from Huntington Park, Cole and Councilman Rolf Janssen from Bell, and Councilman William Hamilton and Mayor Rosemarie Buscaglia from Maywood.

“I am very much in favor of looking into this,” Hamilton said. “But we all agreed that we will take it slow and easy. And if it doesn’t look like it will fly, all we spent was a little time.”

Combined contracts could save each of the cities hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years, city officials estimate.

But some officials believe a full merger would have the biggest benefit, creating a city of about 120,000 residents that would be a more powerful government entity with a broader tax base. The combined city--about the size of Torrance--would rank as one of the largest in Los Angeles County.

“Certain situations are bound to have rocky roads,” Bell Administrator John Bramble said. “But I see (consolidation) as very doable. There’s no reason why the three of us can’t get together.”

Other officials agree, and are hopeful that combining city services is the first step toward three-way unification in the near future.

“For the good of the order and for the good of the community, it is the avenue we need to take,” Huntington Park’s Hernandez said. “The ultimate goal should be that Bell, Maywood and Huntington Park would be willing to merge.”

But Maywood’s Hamilton opposes a merger. “My main reason to stay separate is that I like my own small government and I like my own small town,” he said. “If I would have wanted to live in Bell, I would have bought in Bell 46 years ago.”

Hamilton and City Manager Ron Lindsey also said they are concerned that Maywood city employees would lose jobs if the cities merge.

“I don’t want to have to lay anyone off just to sign a three-way contract,” Lindsey said. “We have good employees doing the work, and I would be concerned about their jobs.” Lindsey does not dispute the cost-savings potential but said he thinks the city can “weather the current economic climate” without such drastic action.

“Maybe there will be a time when we need to do this,” he said. “But not now and not on such a grand scale.”

Residents of Bell and Maywood overwhelmingly rejected a ballot proposal to merge the cities in 1976. At the time, critics in each city claimed the other had its own selfish reasons for consolidating. Maywood residents said Bell simply wanted help in paying off its debt. Bell residents were convinced that Maywood only wanted to increase police protection by relying on Bell’s Police Department.

The three cities grew out of the bean fields of rural Los Angeles County in the early part of the century.

Huntington Park was the first to incorporate, with 500 residents in 1906, according to a published history of the city. Next came Maywood, whose borders were drawn when it was bought and developed by the Laguna Land & Water Co. Maywood incorporated in 1926. Less than a year later, Bell became an incorporated city with a little more than 15,000 residents.

“There has always been a certain amount of rivalry between Bell and Maywood,” former Bell City Clerk Isabel Dedmore recalled. “And because of that, we’ve always wanted to be independent.”

The 90-year-old Maywood resident has lived in either Bell or Maywood most of her life and thinks that the cities should remain separate.

“I love this little city,” she said. “I wouldn’t want it to be swallowed up or forgotten.”

Bramble believes the biggest stumbling block to merger would be more emotional than practical.

“We’re married to these (city) names,” he said. “No matter how much money we’d save, it’d be tough to convince residents to live with a new name.”

3 Cities’ Woes Make Them 1

HUNTINGTON L.A. CATEGORY BELL MAYWOOD PARK COUNTY Size (square miles) 2.8 1.2 3.0 4,083 Population 34,365 27,850 56,056 8.8 million Persons per square mile 12,100 23,280 18,666 2,155 Operating budget (millions) $6.3 $3.9 $11 $13,400 Unemployment rate 12.4% 12.2% 12.8% 7.4% Median household income $22,515 $25,567 $23,595 $34,965 Speak Spanish only at home 70% 78% 82% 32%

RACIAL BREAKDOWN

HUNTINGTON L.A. CATEGORY BELL MAYWOOD PARK COUNTY Hispanic 85% 93% 91% 37% Anglo 11 6 5 41 African-American 1 1 1 11 Asian 1 * 2 10 Other 2 1 1 1

* Population less than 0.5%