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 doesn’t just have the nickname “Hotlanta.” It’s also known as “The Big A” or “A-Town,” according to A.I. The question is whether or not Atlanta gets an “A” for its management of city services, or are there some areas that “The Capital City of the American South” can improve upon? And how can Cobb County help “The Big Peach?”

Over the last five years, Atlanta has been the second-best city…in baseball wins, with the Braves being eighth overall in win percentage the last ten years, trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers in both categories. But for Atlanta’s city services, 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^nd overall on WalletHub’s measure of how well a city is run out of 148 U.S. cities. Georgia’s capital scored better in some categories, like economic rank (3^rd in the country) and infrastructure rank (32^nd 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 in safety.

Here is how did WalletHub determine at these scores “[H]ow do we measure the effectiveness of local leadership? One way is by determining a city’s operating efficiency. In other words, 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.”

According to WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe “The best-run cities in America use their budgets most effectively to provide high-quality financial security, education, health, safety and transportation to their residents. Many of the top cities also have a very low amount of outstanding government debt per capita, which can prevent financial troubles 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 Rouge). Though the measure does seem to be weighted against big 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 bigger ones. That would include Hialeah, Florida, Worcester, Massachusetts, Yonkers, New York, Aurora, Illinois, Arlington, Texas, St. Petersburg, Florida, or Mesa Arizona, for an idea of where the county ranks. Many of these smaller cities aren’t too far off in the rankings next to the bigger cities they share a space near in the WalletHub rankings.

Cobb County and Atlanta are inextricably linked, just like the Braves from Atlanta and Truist Park in this neighboring county. Cobb leaders might think about what partnerships they can form with the Big A, to boost the city’s services and scores. That would be a regional double-play that would be hard to beat.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.