CHAPTER TWELVE
The governments’ proliferation in metropolitan areas and lack of public program coordination adds to the urban problems. For the last forty years, metropolitan reform movement objectives have been to reorganize, consolidate, and enlarge government jurisdictions. These reforms’ primary goal is to get rid of urban areas of infective multiple local jurisdictions and governments that do not coincide with the metropolis’s boundaries, an approach known as functional consolidation or service merger. Reorganization and consolidation of the metropolitan government are expected to bring about improved public services due to centralization and achieve many large-scale operations. The problem with this argument in most studies shows that large municipal governments are uneconomic and fail to produce improved services. Secondly, it is argued that urban consolidation will provide the necessary coordination of public services for the metropolis. Thirdly, it is also argued that urban consolidation emphasizes the need to eliminate inequalities in the financial burdens throughout the metro area. It is also argued that the metropolitan government will establish responsibility for comprehensive urban policy because fragmented governments lids to the scattering of public authority and decentralization of system making in the metropolis.
The existence of independent and separate local government for suburbs play a vital role in developing and maintaining a sense of community identity. They provide additional forums for airing public grievances and personal effectiveness in public affairs. De facto segregation assesses racial minorities’ concentration in an area that results in demographics or economics not provided by law. As a marketplace, the Metropolitan government evaluates whether the current fragmented metropolitan government benefits the public by giving market places where the community may select the best services and taxes suited to their needs. City county consolidation merges county and city government into a single jurisdiction. Local governmental units are usually charged with performing an available function and often overlap municipal and county boundaries. Interjurisdictional agreements among local governments in the metropolitan area perform services jointly or on behalf of each other