The 9 worst-run cities in the US

From managing public transit to deciding whether to raise taxes, running a city is a huge responsibility.

As more Americans move to metropolitan areas, cities are getting larger. (In 26 metropolitan areas, populations grew by more than 10% from 2010 to 2016.) The job of the city official is to balance the needs of these growing populations against their operating budget.

Some cities are doing a better job at this than others, according to a 2017 report by WalletHub. The personal finance site looked at the 150 largest US cities across six key categories: financial stability, education, health, safety, economy, and infrastructure. It then measured those dimensions using 33 metrics, like economic mobility and average commute time, and assigned each city a "Quality of Services" score.

Finally, WalletHub divided these scores by the cities' total budget per capita to compile the ranking. The goal was to see how well each city spends its public funds, measured against residents' quality of life.

The cities that received the lowest scores are below (with the "worst-run city" displayed at #1).