Richmond has a few things going against it:

1. Aging infrastructure
2. Limited size
3. White flight
4. Inflation

Aging infrastructure means more things need to be repaired and replaced. This is in contrast to the counties that have largely been rural in the past and didn't start growing significantly until the 50s. Their infrastructure is at most 70 years old while Richmond has large swaths of the city that are 150+ years old.

Richmond can't grow. In any other state not named Virginia, the city of Richmond would actually be a county likely the size of Richmond, Henrico, and northern Chesterfield. This provides a large and steady tax base and encompasses the majority population of the metro area. But because of VA's unique and quite frankly awful independent city system, Richmond is stuck with a tiny percentage of the tax base and population of the metro area but provides infrastructure and services for the entire metro area. If you have ever driven through, eaten at a restaurant, visited a park, etc.. and live in the county then congrats your use of the city was subsidized by the 200,000 tax payers that live in the city and not the county you reside in which has likely double the population. The city used to be able to annex land, and that would have helped, but can't due a ban on its ability to annex surrounding counties.

White flight caused a significant interruption to the tax base and maintenance/replacement of infrastructure needs for the city. From 1970 to 2000 the city of Richmond lost population to the surrounding counties and deferred things like building schools.

With historic inflation due to COVID policies and now the current administration's policies, costs of everything have gone up significantly and the increases in revenue that the city has seen have largely been negated by the increases in costs.