As always: it depends. There are many municipalities throughout the US that are content with (or can only afford) county-level enforcement. If their residents want something more localized, they need to do what it takes to create that.
In this case, what’s happened is fine. Leaving it up to local residents and their local government to form a new trustworthy enforcement agency is fine. Leaving it up to them to not do that is also fine.
You see it with home owners associations as well.
Sure. But I’d default to the locals’ preferences in the absence of it.
Fun fact: Texas's counties range in population from ~5.1 million (Harris — Houston) to less than 500 (Loving, King, Kenedy [sic])
In Canada, Ontario and Quebec have their own province-level police forces, but the rest of the provinces 'contract' the RCMP to do street-level policing in many areas (with larger municipalities having their own forces). Part of the reason for this is that with any organization there's overhead (training, HR, payroll/pensions, etc), and for smaller communities a larger portion of a fixed budget would go to those things, so by leveraging the RCMP those fixed costs are amortized wider.
In Ontario/Quebec, many smaller communities use the OPP/QPP for local policing (larger cities have their own forces) for the same reason.
For the community in the article, is there a reason why the same 5 cops couldn't become employees of the county's force? For really small counties, it may be necessary / useful to 'contract' the state police to run a local detachment.
Or are we all about locally-sourced, artisanal law enforcement now?
Are you suggesting that your way is The Way everyone else should go? That is what I’m arguing against. Let locals decide.