Congrats to Nampa, Idaho which might be a fine place but is a different governance challenge than large urban cities.
I was thinking the same. It would be more informative had they also included a column for population.
I wouldn’t consider Nashua NH a city as I understand the word “city”. The same goes for Warwick, RI and some of the other New England “cities” they have listed.
They are cities. I’m not sure why you would think otherwise…except that they aren’t huge.
Communities with a smaller population I think should be called towns. Lewiston, Maine has only 36,000 people. With its crime problem, I wouldn’t consider it well run, either. The largest “city” in Maine is Portland, with only 69,000 people.
Getting a little off topic…maybe needs another thread…but how small? If small…there are states like NH and ME that might not have any “cities”.
…and state and municipal taxes/expenses. If they’re going to have Income and Services, the positives… let’s see how much it costs, the negatives. Also, standard of living adjustments should be made (and hopefully were) to accurately measure purchasing power.
Obviously, better services usually cost more, so that is often a political issue on whether one wants more services with higher taxes, or less services with lower taxes (although many people seem to think that these are detached from each other, wanting more services and lower taxes, while expecting a balanced budget).
But within any given level of service spending and taxes to pay for it, a government can be more or less efficient. For example, around the average level of services and taxes, a better run government may provide above average services with average taxes, or average services with below average taxes, compared to others with similar external environments to deal with. A worse run government may provide below average services with average taxes, or average services with above average taxes, compared to others with similar external environments to deal with.
Sure – Hill Mount might spend twice as much on buses as Pond Lake does, but if Hill Mount’s buses break down more often or if the drivers are sick/unreliable, Pond Lake’s people might be more satisfied with their bus service. But from a stratospheric viewpoint, how would we ever know that? We might presume that since Hill Mount spends more on buses, that the service is better.
One city in the 20s is a … mess. The long time mayor is a clown. I honestly don’t know how it made it on that list. As a result, I have no faith in the list being anything other than clickbait. That’s just my opinion.
Methodology is at the bottom. Mayor clown-iness is not a factor. Detailed scores by city by topic are provided, showing how each city earned its place on the list. Is one of the scores factually inaccurate?
Common trend seems to be that small, isolated towns rank in the top; and large cities as well as their not as wealthy satellites (i.e. Tacoma vs. Seattle) rank in the bottom.
Nice to see a KY city in there, at No. 2. Largest in the top 10. Those Kentuckians must know what they’re doing. 
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