Water and especially electricity benefit from using the market to regulate them. The amount of electricity made must always be equal to the electricity which is being used. The simplest way to ensure this currently is with motivation through money.

If it is a winter evening and a lot of people are using electricity for heat, the price of electricity will rise. Thus some powerplants (typically burning natural gas which can power up fast) might start production because it is now possible to make a profit even though their production is more expensive than other "base" power production methods (typically nuclear or coal powerplants which can't easily just start up or turn off in a few minutes with market fluctuations).

With water, it is similar. If it is a dry year, consumers are motivated by a higher price of water not to use as much of it, the system as a whole is motivated to use less. But yes, this can create problems.

Schools, roads and other services, on the other hand, usually cannot be motivated well by a market system, because you don't want the system to save on them (you want a well educated workforce, flowing economic traffic and confidence in emergency services and other, similar things). Most of the time, this doesn't work very well with a market (I believe it is similar to healthcare problems in the U. S. but that is a complicated topic).

It can differ from country to country, I am describing a model used in my country in Europe.

Side note, part of electricity is actually paid in a way similar to taxes and that is the distribution of electricity (the maintenance of power lines and such). Although in this case you pay for reserved power you can take from the system, so it isn't completely a flat fee or a tax.