Is the city of Atlanta as well run as the Braves?

Image above generated by DALL-E from ChatGPT

And can Cobb County contribute?

By John A. Tures, professor of political science at LaGrange College

Believe it or not, Atlanta doesn’t just have the nickname “Hotlanta.” It is also known as “The Big A” or “A-Town,” according to AI. The question is whether or not Atlanta gets an “A” for its management of urban services, or are there areas that are “the capital of the American South” that can be improved? And how can Cobb County help “The Big Peach?” »

Over the past five years, Atlanta has been the second-best city… in baseball wins, with the Braves eighth overall in winning percentage over the past ten years, behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in both categories. . But for Atlanta municipal departments, it’s more like the Washington Nationals. But at least we’re not like the New York Mets or the Miami Marlins.

As Fox News reports, the city of Atlanta scored 62^sd overall on WalletHub’s measurement of how a city is run among 148 U.S. cities. The Georgian capital performed better in some categories, such as economic ranking (3^rd in the country) and the rank of infrastructure (32^sd overall), but in other cases it’s not so great. The city scored 79^th in financial stability, 85^th in health, 93^rd in education, and 119^th Safe.

Here’s how WalletHub determined these scores “(H)ow do we measure local leadership effectiveness? One solution is to determine the operational efficiency of a city. In other words, we can know how well city authorities manage and spend public funds by comparing the quality of services received by residents relative to the city’s total budget. Using this approach, WalletHub compared the operational efficiency of 148 of America’s largest cities to reveal which of them are best run. We constructed a “Quality of Services” score composed of 36 indicators grouped into six categories of services, which we then measured in relation to the city’s per capita budget.

According to WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe, “America’s best-run cities use their budgets most efficiently to provide their residents with high-quality financial security, education, health, safety, and transportation.” Many large cities also have a very low amount of public debt per capita, which can prevent financial problems in the future. »

It’s worth noting that you can find three Southern cities in the top 10 (Virginia Beach, Charleston, and Chesapeake (VA)) as well as half of the bottom ten (Jackson (MS), Shreveport, Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Red). . Although the measure seems to weigh on larger cities, you can find Boston in the top ten, and Austin, Portland, San Diego, Miami, Tampa, Orlando and San Francisco in the top 25.

For Cobb County, the best way to determine the importance of this measure is to look at other cities on the list tied to the larger ones. This would include Hialeah, Florida, Worcester, Massachusetts, Yonkers, New York, Aurora, Illinois, Arlington, Texas, St. Petersburg, Florida, or Mesa Arizona, to get an idea of ​​how the county ranks. Many of these smaller cities aren’t very far down the rankings, next to the larger cities near which they share space in the WalletHub rankings.

Cobb County and Atlanta are inextricably linked, as are the Atlanta Braves and Truist Park in this neighboring county. Cobb leaders might consider what partnerships they can form with the Big A, to improve the city’s services and scores. This would be a tough regional doubleheader to beat.

John A. Tures is professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His opinions are his own. He can be reached at [email protected]. His “X” account is JohnTures2.