According to a new WalletHub study released this week, San Francisco is the worst-run city in the United Stated, followed closely behind by Oakland and Gulfport, MS.
For years, San Francisco has struggled with many issues including a high crime rate, a growing number of homeless people in the city, a massive city deficit, and the overall worst recovery of any city from the COVID-19 pandemic. When WalletHub was creating the survey, they sought to measure the effectiveness of local leadership by determining a city’s operating efficiency.
Directly quoting WalletHub:
“We can learn how well city officials manage and spend public funds by comparing the quality of the services residents receive against the city’s total budget. Using that approach, WalletHub compared the operating efficiency of 148 of the largest U.S. cities to reveal which among them are managed best. We constructed a “Quality of Services” score made up of 36 metrics grouped into six service categories, which we then measured against the city’s per-capita budget.”
When it came to the city services score, San Francisco ranked pretty high, coming in 24th. San Francisco actually came in first when it came to resident health, having the lowest infant mortality rate, 12th in infrastructure and pollution, and 15th when it came to education. However they also faltered heavily in other categories, including being all the way down at 101st when it comes to overall safety and 133rd in it’s economic rank.
However, other areas also fared far worse. San Francisco, along with Oakland, had amongst the worst violent crime rate. When it came to the quality of roads, SF was the fifth worst in the nation, tying with their Bay neighbor Oakland. And finally, San Francisco ranked dead last, tied with Nashville, as having the worst long-term debt outstanding per capita. Overall, it meant that San Francisco was also dead last in their total budget per capita rank – a sharp contrast to their high city services score.
Compared to previous years, San Francisco also got an overall last place in 2023, and a second-to-last place in 2022.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed quickly challenged the results after they came out on Tuesday. According to her office “WalletHub does this every year and every year, it’s misleading and inaccurate, because this study compares San Francisco’s budget (City AND County) with other cities (City only budgets).”
However, WalletHub soon fired back, with WalletHub communications manager Diana Polk noting, “I would like to clarify that WalletHub relies on the Fiscally Standardized Cities (FiSC) dataset as it provides a reliable source for making accurate, apples-to-apples comparisons at city level between different municipalities. We do not alter the data provided by FiSC in any way to ensure an unbiased comparison.”
City financial experts also noted that the study fairly accurately shows San Francisco’s financial problems on a larger scale.
“The WalletHub study only further highlights the problems San Francisco is facing,” James Porter, an accountant who has helped relieve bloated city budgets in California, Arizona, and Nevada, told the Globe on Wednesday. “San Francisco is claiming it’s because it is city and county together, but that doesn’t absolve them of the massive problems. Lots of cities have that city-county connection and are doing just fine. No, San Francisco has good services at the cost of their finances being a car wreck. Their economy is not doing so great, and the study shows all of that.”
“It’s an election year, so some people are getting more defensive about this, especially in San Francisco where Breed, who challenged the study, is currently losing to another candidate. When it comes down to it, San Francisco just isn’t in good shape.
“Numbers don’t lie.”
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