The City of Las Cruces continues to rate highly for its management and operations as WalletHub.com and American City & County Magazine have ranked Las Cruces as the ninth-best run U.S. city.
“Many thanks to the women and men of the City of Las Cruces team, as well as City Manager Ifo Pili, Assistant City Managers Ikani Taumoepeau, Eric Enriquez, and Chief Administrative Officer Barbara DeLeon, and my City Council colleagues,” Mayor Ken Miyagishima said.
“Running a city is not an easy task, even when the U.S. isn’t in the throes of a global pandemic,” said a portion of story posted Thursday, July 15, 2021 on the American City and County website. “The bigger the city, the more complex it becomes to manage, with local leaders trying to balance the diverse interests of residents with a city’s resources and budgets. Leaders must prioritize services — which are essential, which budgets can be boosted or cut? Do they need to raise taxes?”
WalletHub.com echoed similar sentiments.
“This year has been a true test of the effectiveness of local leadership, as city leaders have had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, including enforcing restrictions and helping to facilitate the distribution of the vaccine,” a part of WalletHub.com’s story said. “As new COVID-19 cases continue to drop, these leaders will be responsible for helping the transition back to normalcy go as smoothly as possible.”
WalletHub recently measured the effectiveness of local leadership by determining a city’s operating efficiency, and how well city officials manage and spend public funds by comparing the quality of services residents receive against the city’s total budget.
Using that approach, WalletHub compared the operating efficiency of 150 of the largest U.S. cities to reveal which among them are managed best across six key categories – Financial stability, Stability, Education, Health, Safety, Economy, and Infrastructure and Pollution. They constructed a “Quality of Services” score consisting of 38 metrics grouped into those six categories, which WalletHub then measured against the city’s per-capita budget. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest quality of service.
WalletHub then calculated an overall “Quality of City Services” score for each city based on its weighted average across all the metrics, and then for each city, they 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, which determined the overall ranking.
“We can learn how well city officials manage and spend public funds by comparing the quality of services residents receive against the city’s total budget,” a portion of WalletHub.com’s story said.
This latest highlight for the City adds to a growing list of accomplishments it has received national attention for. In recent years, the City has received numerous accolades from various U.S. publications and organizations. In 2019, WalletHub.com listed Las Cruces as the sixth-best run U.S. city, and in 2018 WalletHub.com said Las Cruces was the best-run city in New Mexico.
WalletHub is a personal finance website that was launched in early August 2013. It is based in Washington, D.C. and is owned by Evolution Finance, Inc. American City & County Magazine has been the voice of state and local governments since 1909. It serves city, county and state officials who are charged with developing and implementing government policy, programs and projects.