Bell, Calif. - Residents in this modest blue-collar Los Angeles suburb where one in six lives in poverty were angry: Their city manager was getting paid more than President Barack Obama and the police chief more than the commander of the nearly 13,000-member LAPD.

They demanded and got the manager, the chief and another high-salaried official to resign.

They looked for the culprits and found them in the very people they entrusted to lead their city of 40,000 people. Now, they're campaigning to boot them out of office.

Their mayor and three of their four council members, people they see every day at the grocery store or church, approved the contracts, and put an obscure measure on the ballot that allowed council members to pay themselves any amount of money.

And they did: collecting between $90,000 and $100,000 a year as part-time officials.

"This is America and everything should be transparent," longtime Bell resident Ralph Macias said.

In Bell, however, not many people really paid attention. The city of mostly small homes is like many American cities and towns: No newspaper covers them regularly, and the citizens spend what little free time they have with family and recreation.

A few who kept tabs on City Hall said they were suspicious because the officials were secretive, brusque and quick to act without explaining themselves.

"What caught us by surprise was the amount of money they were paying people," said Ali Saleh, who helped form the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse, whose acronym BASTA, translates to "Enough!" in Spanish.

The salaries exploded into public view last week after a Los Angeles Times investigation, based on California Public Records Act requests, showed that the city payroll was bloated with all sorts of six-figure salaries:

• Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo made $787,637 a year, getting a series of raises since being hired in 1993 at $72,000. President Obama makes $400,000.

• Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia made $376,288 a year.

• Police Chief Randy Adams earned $457,000. Hired just last year to oversee a force of fewer than 50 people, he was making 50 percent more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck's $307,000.

All three Bell officials resigned after a late-night meeting Thursday.