Wisconsin Is Home To One Of The Best Ran Cities In The U.S.

Wherever you live, you hope that your city is being run the best it possibly could be by the elected officials. Unfortunately, that's not the case in many cities across the U.S., including in Wisconsin. While "running a city" can be a subjective opinion, there are objective facts to prove how great or poorly a city is being run.

A new study lists the cities in the U.S. that are being run the best and worst. One of those cities is in Wisconsin. There is one city in Iowa and Illinois, but not as high on this list as the one in Wisconsin.

Finding The Best & Worst Run Cities in the U.S.

A new study from WalletHub has come out titled 2024’s Best- & Worst-Run Cities in America. We're not talking about physically running, we're talking about making sure departments, governments, and programs put on by the city are running smoothly.

To find the best- and worst-run cities in the U.S., WalletHub compared 149 of the most populated cities across six key categories:

1. Financial Stability
2. Education
3. Health
4. Safety
5. Economy
6. Infrastructure & Pollution.

WalletHub evaluated those dimensions using 36 relevant metrics. They calculated an overall “Quality of City Services” score for each city based on its weighted average across all the metrics.

Finally, for each city, WalletHub divided the “Quality of City Services” score by the “Total Budget per Capita” (dollar amount) in order to construct a “Score per Dollar Spent” index. That is displayed as “Overall Rank” which is how they found the best- and worst-run cities.

Madison, WI Is In The Top 25 Best Ran Cities in the U.S.

WalletHub found that Madison is the 21st best-run city in America. Madison ranked 14th in Quality of City Services and 41st in Total Budget per Capita.

The only other Wisconsin city to make this list was Milwaukee which landed at #92.