Keeping a city humming along smoothly is no easy task, especially during a global pandemic. With budgets to manage, services and programs to greenlight or nix, and constituents' needs to meet, local leaders have challenges at hand even during the best of times. WalletHub looked at 150 of the nation's largest cities, as well as the District of Columbia, to see how efficient their operations are, coming up with a "quality of services" score based on more than three dozen metrics in six categories: financial stability, education, health, safety, economy, and infrastructure and pollution. The site then divided that score by each city's total budget per capita to come up with its rankings. Nampa, Idaho, takes the No. 1 spot on the list, while DC falls last. See what other cities made it into the top and bottom 10:
Best-Run Cities
- Nampa, Idaho (No. 1 in "Total Budget per Capita" category)
- Boise, Idaho
- Fort Wayne, Ind.
- Nashua, NH
- Lexington-Fayette, Ky.
- Lincoln, Neb.
- Durham, NC
- Rapid City, SD
- Las Cruces, NM
- Virginia Beach, Va.
Worst-Run Cities - Chicago
- Cleveland
- Flint, Mich.
- Oakland, Calif.
- Detroit
- Gulfport, Miss.
- Chattanooga, Tenn.
- New York
- San Francisco
- Washington, DC
See the rest of the list
here. (
These are the cities to look to if you're starting a new career.)