In addition we can only raise property taxes by so much due to laws from the 80's like Prop 2.5 which limit residential property tax growth. So even if tomorrow a city like Somerville said "yeah so we're going to jack taxes up to fund major infrastructure investments"... They literally couldn't do that. It's definitely a contributing factor to how we're piece mealing infrastructure improvements like only doing 1 street per year, at a rate so slow by the time we've addressed every street in a given City we'll have to start over again.

Oh and even if say Somerville or Cambridge decided to fix things, that doesn't matter if towns like Lexington, Concord, etc are allowed to continue denying any new dense housing buildings. We need every City and Town within MA to step up it's game, otherwise things will continue to get worse. No one town can fix things.