That level of risk aversion has been burned into policymakers, especially at the local level. Wasting taxpayer money by letting an inefficient system continue to degrade makes less news than doing so by investing in a risk that failed, and gets a lot fewer people screaming at you in public and sending you death threats.
Yes! "We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" is not inspiring! Mamdani threw cash at the problem of snow on the streets and now, huh, suddenly there's not so much snow on the streets of NYC compared to previous blizzards, who would have thought.
The issue is that all money-throwing needs to be balanced by careful thought. This cycle the money-throwing at snow plowing worked. Next cycle, it will not be as effective, as more people who want to "game" the rewards will enter the equation. So every cycle, along with money, some thought will need to go into improving the system or coming up with alternate solutions.