Taxes

America's best- (and worst-) managed cities

Anita Balakrishnan
WATCH LIVE

Best- (and worst-) managed US cities

A NYPD Police honor guard stands at attention during a ceremony
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Where do your tax dollars go—and how well are they used?The 2015 "Best & Worst Run Cities in America" ranking looked at per capita spending on education, police and parks in the 65 most-populated U.S. cities.

It measured how well each dollar translated into high standardized test scores, low crime rates and total acres of park land.

The following cities had the best—or worst—return on investment (ROI) of resident tax dollars, adjusted for socioeconomic factors, according to WalletHub, a social network for consumers and small business news.

To decide rankings, WalletHub measured three ratios: Park acreage divided by park expenditures, test scores divided by education spending per capita, and crime rate divided by per capita spending on police. The ratios were weighted for importance and adjusted for socioeconomic factors like median household income, poverty rate and percent of single-parent families to create an average. Out of 110 cities with rankable data, 65 made the final list.

Up first, WalletHub's five best-managed cities in America...

— By CNBC's Anita Balakrishnan
Posted 10 March 2015

5th-Best: Pittsburgh

North Shore Water Steps, Pittsburgh
Source: VisitPittsburgh

Though Pittsburgh lagged on funding parks (with a score of 58), the city excelled at education and police spending, ranking 15 and 16, respectively.

4th-Best: Dallas

Jeremy Woodhouse | Getty Images

Dallas, on the other hand, scored well on parks ROI, at 7, with lower ROI in other categories: 21 on education and 27 on police spending.

3rd-best: El Paso, Texas

Shopping area, El Paso, Texas.
Mmphotos | Photolibrary | Getty Images

They say everything's bigger in Texas—including return on public investment. El Paso beat most of the pack in safety, spending only about $200 per capita on police and achieving a crime rate under 3 percent.

2nd-best: Philadelphia

The skyline of Philadelphia
Jerry Driendl | Photolibrary | Getty Images

The City of Brotherly Love takes care of its own, especially when it comes to parks and education, where Philadelphia ranks 9 and 10 (weighted).

Best-run city: Lubbock, Texas

Lubbock, Texas
Source: Scott W. Lang | Wikipedia

Maybe Texas really does do it best, at least in Lubbock. To be fair, as a smaller city, Lubbock has an advantage, according to Christopher Douglas, an economics professor at University of Michigan-Flint.

"I tend to think that smaller cities are better run than larger ones," Douglas told WalletHub. "Smaller cities give residents more of a voice in city elections, which shifts the power in elections away from interest groups and towards residents."

Now click on to see the worst cities for spending tax dollars efficiently.

5th-Worst:Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City skyline
Edwin Remsberg | Getty Images

KC got slammed by WalletHub on police spending:The city spends $539 per capita on police and still has a crime rate of 6.7 percent.

"City governments as a whole have not fully recovered from the Great Recession," Carol Ebdon, professor of public administration at the University of Nebraska Omaha, told WalletHub. "Some have done better than others, but many are still struggling."

4th-Worst: New York

The Brooklyn Bridge and the skyline of lower Manhattan, New York.
Ryan D. Budhu | Getty Images

Maybe grumpy New Yorkers have a case. Despite using parks and recreation money well, the city tanked in education and police spending. Still, it is "hard to tell" what a well-run city truly is, Hunter College economics professor Howard Chernick told WalletHub.

"Some folks love anecdotes here, [like] I know the NYC Police just 'sit around'— but that is not very useful, I find," Chernick said.

3rd-Worst: Riverside, California

David Liu | Getty Images

Riverside lands near the bottom when it comes to education in particular: $1,683 per capita only buys Riverside students a 45 percent average score on standardized tests. "Mayors often have little direct control over the public schools, but high quality schools are absolutely essential to attract residents," Douglas said.

2nd-worst: Long Beach, California

Long Beach, California
Allan Baxter | Getty Images

A scenic marina wasn't quite enough to save Long Beach residents from losing out on education, parks and especially police spending, where the city spent almost $600 per person to keep the crime rate at 3.35 percent.

Worst-run city: Fremont, California

Fremont, California
Source: City of Fremont, California

Fremont, an offshoot of Silicon Valley, had the lowest poverty and highest household income in the survey. But that didn't translate into a wealth of well-spent tax money for WalletHub. Fremont was particularly dragged down by per capita police spending. Despite having one of the lowest crime rates of the cities surveyed, Fremont still spent $335 per capita on police.

"There are no quick fixes to these challenges," Dwight Denison, professor of public finance at the University of Kentucky, said in the survey. "Addressing these challenges requires city officials to make the resolution of these fiscal challenges a priority."

Find your city in the full rankings here.