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

Image above generated by DALL-E from ChatGPT

And can Cobb County contribute?

By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

Believe it or not, Atlanta isn’t just nicknamed “Hotlanta.” According to AI, it’s also known as “The Big A” or “A-Town.” The question is, does Atlanta get an “A” in city services management, or are there certain areas that “The Capital of the American South” can improve? And how can Cobb County help “The Big Peach”?

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

As Fox News reports, the city of Atlanta scored 62^NL overall, based on WalletHub’s measure of how well a city ranks among 148 U.S. cities. The Georgian capital scored better in some categories, such as economic rank (3^rd in the country) and infrastructure rank (32^NL in general), but in other cases it’s not so great. The city scored 79^e in the area of ​​financial stability, 85^e in the field of health care, 93^rd in education, and 119^e in safety.

Based on these scores, how did WalletHub determine: “How do we measure the effectiveness of local leadership? One way is by determining a city’s operational efficiency. In other words, we can learn how well city officials manage and spend public resources by comparing the quality of services residents receive against the city’s total budget. Using this approach, WalletHub compared the operational efficiencies of 148 of the largest U.S. cities to determine which are best managed. We created a ‘Quality of Services’ score consisting of 36 metrics, grouped into six service categories, which we then measured against the city’s per capita budget.”

According to WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe, “America’s best-run cities use their budgets most effectively to provide their residents with high-quality financial security, education, health care, safety and transportation. Many of the top cities also have very low outstanding public debt per capita, which could 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)) and half of the bottom ten (Jackson (MS), Shreveport, Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge). Although the benchmark seems to be weighted toward the major cities, you’ll 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 that are related to larger cities. That would include Hialeah, Florida, Worcester, Massachusetts, Yonkers, New York, Aurora, Illinois, Arlington, Texas, St. Petersburg, Florida or Mesa Arizona, to get an idea of ​​where the county stands. Many of these smaller cities are not far away in the rankings next to the larger cities where they share a space nearby in the WalletHub rankings.

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

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