Don't overestimate Dallas. I can't speak to what the heck we're doing with actual tax revenue, but the city services and infrastructure are terrible. I actually don't have many complaints about the police, but it's not like my information is rooted in research and statistics. I've just lived downtown for a while and seen quite a few interactions between homeless and police and they seem unusually good at de-escalation and not just rushing in and beating people up as seems common in other big cities.
But ... our infrastructure is terrible. A quarter-inch of rain and over half the street lights in the city stop working. Any bit of wind knocks out power lines constantly, and it's pretty windy. Partly because they're all above ground, partly because the poles are old and falling over, partly because the city doesn't trim trees nor force property owners to do it, so branches are constantly overhanging and destroying things.
We had a somewhat notorious incident a few years ago where someone managed to set off all the tornado alarms citywide for a full day. They managed to do this because the control system was just radio. Not encrypted, not authenticated. Just direct the right channel at the right receiver and you could set off all of the city's tornado alarms.
City infrastructure here is an absolute mess, and if they cut costs on everything else by buying crap and not performing any maintenance, it doesn't surprise me one bit they do exactly the same thing with IT infrastructure.