Crime is down, graduation rates are up and employment is strong — but New Yorkers from Harlem to Hollis wouldn’t know it from this ranking. New York City is the fifth-worst-run big city in America, according to a new WalletHub study that examines how much bang cities get for their buck.
The personal finance website scored 150 of the most populous U.S. cities on the quality of their services and weighed that score against each city’s spending. The urban centers were ranked on their “Score per Dollar Spent” index, calculated by dividing a city’s quality-of-services score by its per-capita budget.
New York City’s massive budget — which is $92.8 billion for the fiscal year that started Monday— helped put it at No. 146 on WalletHub’s ranking despite its relatively strong municipal services reports Patch.
The Big Apple’s quality-of-services score was among the best in the nation at No. 16. The city earned high marks in several of the 37 metrics that WalletHub used to calculate the score, including No. 1 rankings for public transit, pedestrian friendliness and the number of motor-vehicle fatalities per capita.
But New York’s hefty spending outweighed those strong performances. The city’s per-capita budget is $14,486, the third-largest among the cities that WalletHub ranked.
Only two other East Coast cities were among the 10 worst-run in WalletHub’s eyes: Washington, D.C., which placed dead last, and Hartford, Connecticut, which ranked ninth from the bottom.
New Yorkers seeking a better-run city as WalletHub defines it may want to head west to Idaho. The Gem State city of Nampa took the No. 1 spot on the website’s ranking, and the capital city of Boise placed third.
Here are the 10 worst-run cities in America, according to WalletHub. Read the website’s full report to learn more.
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