Metropolis / Snapshots From The Center of The Universe

THOSE OF US WHO SMELL CIVIL DOOM IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S unchecked population growth might well ponder the tale of beleaguered Maywood and its dreadful streets.

Maywood, about 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, is one of the downriver working-class cities that rarely penetrate the consciousness of upriver people. It’s small, only 1.2 square miles, but inhabited by an estimated 40,000 souls (30,000, if you believe a recent state study, which no one in Maywood does). At either number, it’s the most densely populated city in California.

The population has pressed mightily on Maywood’s dated infrastructure. The sewers are overburdened. The water system, a patchwork of three ratepayer-owned companies, barely manages. The playgrounds of the city’s three schools are being eaten up by classroom bungalows.

Nearly half of Maywood’s rental apartments are classified as “extremely overcrowded,” meaning they shelter more than 1.5 persons per room. “It’s just a never-ending battle going after the converted garages, the inhabited laundry rooms, the single-family dwellings that have been divided two and three times,” says David Mango, the city’s building and planning director.

Some of the problems compound others. Because of poor water pressure, for example, the L.A. County Fire Department won’t approve construction of high-rise housing. Building “up” to ease overcrowding is not an option.

Against such massive difficulties, the city’s tax base, which is almost entirely residential, generates nothing close to sufficient firepower.

Of all these, perhaps the most aggravating problem to residents was the condition of the streets. More than half of Maywood’s 28 miles of roadway, says Mayor Sam Pena, “were more pothole than original paving material.”

Shortly after his election in March 1999, Pena and other city officers met to noodle the dilemma of how to repave the streets without further burdening economically pressed residents. Finance director Mike Williams had an idea.

Each year the city received about $300,000 in transportation funds from county Proposition A. These Proposition A funds, however, were administered by the Metropolitan Transit Authority and could be used only to improve public transit. If after three years a city hadn’t used them, the funds had to be returned to the county.

In Maywood, public transit, in the form of MTA buses, existed only on Slauson Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard, Maywood’s intersecting main drags. The city was already receiving federal funds to maintain Slauson and Atlantic. The crying need was on Maywood’s interior streets, where people lived.

Williams’ idea was to issue Certificates of Participation. COPs are bonds that don’t require voter approval because they’re retired by payments from a city’s general fund.

Maywood’s general fund, of course, couldn’t take on the additional burden. Williams’ solution was to sell Maywood’s unusable Proposition A funds at a discount to another city that could use them. The proceeds would flow into Maywood’s general fund and thus could be used to retire the $3.2 million in COPs that would finance the street repairs.

It worked. West Hollywood agreed to a five-year contract whereby it received $300,000 a year in Proposition A funds from Maywood in exchange for $195,000 a year, which was earmarked for the COPs.

Within six months, all 14 miles of Maywood’s horrible streets were transformed. To residents, it seemed nearly a miracle.

The new smooth-riding, rubberized asphalt streets prompted property owners along them to repair and repaint dwellings, and to plant more flowers. “You could see a lot more pride in ownership in people, a new pride in their community,” says Maywood Police Chief Rick Lopez.

Creative fund-switching for streets was not all that Maywood’s leaders had up their sleeves. They contrived to qualify the entire city as a state-recognized “redevelopment area,” a bold stroke rarely attempted anywhere in California.

The designation will freeze Maywood’s tax base and allow all additional tax revenue born of future increases in property values to flow directly to the city instead of to L.A. County. Since the county automatically grants a city a minimum 2% growth in property valuation every year, Maywood stands to reap at least $145 million over the next 45 years, and it may use the money to pay for any improvement projects it likes (high on the list is a $40-million-to-$50-million replacement of the entire sewer system).

Maywood’s leaders wonder what their city’s population saturation point is. They thought they’d reached it a couple of times already. In any case, they know they’re powerless to prevent further peopling of the place, especially given that Maywood, with its small-town feel and hands-on public servants, is thought of as a good place by the immigrant community.

But they are young--Pena 32, Mango and Lopez, 38--and disinclined to grieve over lost Edens, past or future, real or imagined. They concentrate on the problems at hand, and hope that doing so eventually will make Maywood, as Pena says, “a confident small town.”

They believe in vigor, innovation, improvisation, optimism. Their optimism may prove blind in the long run, given the demographic forces arrayed against it, but while we Cassandras were throwing up our hands at the abstract hopelessness of things, it surely got the roads fixed.