Completely different situation - New Orleans HAD adequate federal money (paid for by taxpayers in 49 other states) to upgrade their levees and chose to squander the funds.
I'm thinking more in terms of snow plows and the like. After a severe, unusual winter storm, you'll see people and the media whining about how a city that gets significant snowfall about once every 50 years needs to run out and buy a fleet of snow plows - at someone else's expense, of course. We had a 9-inch snowfall this year, the first significant snow since 1993, so I got to hear the whining up close and personal.
Point is, you can't prepare for 100% perfection because it is prohibitively expensive and impossible. At some point, a cost-benefit analysis must be made. In this situation, perhaps more should be spent, but it must be remembered that situations like this are very rare and it would be a complete waste of resources to spend a ton of someone else's money to prepare for something that won't likely happen again in our lifetimes.
Texas has enough money to make sure the power plants are protected from an unusually severe winter, they just took the calcuated risk that it wouldn't occur.
These are local issues, and it is the responsibilty of the local areas to be prepared.
If the citizens want to spend the money for extra plows, even if they are rarely used, it is there money being used for something they feel they need.
So, I don't know what you are talking about 'someone else's money', since all the local citizens would benefit from not having their power turned off or roads covered in snow.