Money is the answer and until local and state governance can get on the same page it wont improve. At some point the voters have to take a good long look in the mirror but they arent educated to earn enough money to buy a mirror.
That might be the case in Jackson (and my MIL lives in Jackson, so I am very familiar with the issues you’ve described) but New Orleans isn’t broke or being squeezed by BR. Between Katrina federal aid, port revenue, tourist dollars, pandemic aid, the city has received more than 20 billion in just the last 18 years.
We just can’t translate that into civic progress. NOPD has high pay and benefits but keep losing cops to neighboring parishes. We had billions in FEMA money for road repairs that sat unused for years until the deadline approached and the city just let out a ton of projects all at once, so there are hundreds of half done streets everywhere.