If you’re looking for a diamond in the rough, look no further than the Gem State.
Idaho took home the top two spots on WalletHub’s 2021 list of best- and worst-run cities in America, easily beating out competitors in New York, California, and Florida.
Nampa and Boise finished first and second in the overall rankings, which were released Tuesday.
“Even when the U.S. isn’t in a time of crisis, running a city is a tall order,” WalletHub’s Adam McCann said. “The larger the city, the more complex it becomes to manage. In addition to representing the residents, local leaders must balance the public’s diverse interests with the city’s limited resources. That often means not everyone’s needs can or will be met. Leaders must carefully consider which services are most essential, which agencies’ budgets to cut or boost and whether and how much to raise taxes, among other decisions.”
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He added that one way to measure the effectiveness of local leadership is by determining a city’s operating efficiency.
“In other words, we can learn how well city officials manage and spend public funds by comparing the quality of services residents receive against the city’s total budget,” he said.
WalletHub, a website specializing in financial advice, compared the operating efficiency of 150 of the largest U.S. cities to reveal which ones were managed the best.
The company, based in Washington, D.C., constructed a “quality of services” score based on 38 metrics grouped into six service categories. That score was then measured against the city’s per-capita budget. The six categories include financial stability, education, health, safety, economy, and infrastructure and pollution.
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The company then divided the quality of city services score by the total budget per capita in order to come up with a “score per dollar spent” index, labeled “overall rank,” which was then used to rank-order the cities in the survey’s sample.
Rounding out the top five cities are Fort Wayne, Indiana; Nashua, New Hampshire; and Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky.
The five cities that performed the worst were Gulfport, Mississippi; Chattanooga, Tennessee; New York; San Francisco; and Washington.
