Yep this is the problem entirely. Residents fight paying for the actual costs to maintain and run municipal services for decades, because they don't understand the concept of long-term maintenance and liability costs.

The system gets neglected to the point of failure, and local leaders being unable to raise the now massive amount of money to fix all the deferred maintenance, sell it off to private companies who have zero qualms with increasing people's bills to pay for the services and cover the cost of all that back due maintenance.