Yeah, in general, city council members are more accountable than a corporation. I can go to a meeting and yell at them. They're also living with the same service, most of the time, so they have a vested interest in making it a high quality experience. It's certainly possible to imagine bribery and other fuckery going on in local government that would make service worse or more expensive than competition, but corruption is historically pretty rare in the US (though it's been on the rise, as permission has been granted from the top). And, competition is an illusion when it comes to utilities; the competitors are all just competing to take a cut, they're not able to compete on service because they aren't actually the provider.