City States

With the aligned interests of many of our school and political subdivisions hemorraging money and resources, and often duplicating services at various levels of competence, why do we continuously continue to act like Greek City States and avoid consolidation. It often amuses me that you can identify a Rio Grande Valley transplant by the fact that they identify themselves as being from the Valley, while most life long residents identify themselves by the city of their birth. I mean, I certainly agree that in most incidents all politics is local, but we seem to like to push that to the extreme. More often it is to the detriment of the citizens of the area. One example is the failed Hospital District that both Cameron and Hidalgo County needed. Another example is the duplicated fiefdom of the County Commissioners with regard to crews and equipment. As our cities continue to run into one another, with only obscured city limit signs to distinguish that we are moving from one to another, shouldn't we also move to consolidate some of the services and protections. I am not naive. I know it has to do with power struggles, but does it make sense?