Good government depends on coordination. When that coordination breaks down, even well-intentioned efforts start working against one another. Across Catawba County, schools, agencies, and development boards all strive to serve the public, yet too often they do it separately. Overlapping systems and competing priorities have turned cooperation into a challenge of its own. The Cost of Control examines how fragmentation, duplication, and competing jurisdictions make progress harder than it should be—and how stronger alignment could save both money and momentum.
Executive Summary of Structural Schisms 5: The Cost of Control
🏛️ The Price of Fragmentation: When Governance Becomes Competition
This area’s governmental institutions can stifle progress because a lack of coordination and communication leads to fragmentation—and there are too many centers of command. Every major system in Catawba County, from schools to planning boards, operates inside its own walls with its own objectives. Instead of cooperation, we see duplication: three public school districts with three administrations; overlapping development boards with different recruitment goals; and local agencies that plan the same projects in isolation.
What was meant to provide checks and balances has turned into competition for money, credit, and control. The result is slow decision-making, wasted resources, and a community that keeps having the same conversations and processes year after year. The Cost of Control examines how fragmentation in governance has become a very expensive habit—and why real progress will require leaders willing to give up turf before the community can generate momentum. This is supposed to be the people’s government, not the government’s government.
🧩 Built to Divide: How Patchwork Governance Took Hold
This structure didn’t appear overnight. It evolved over decades through a pattern of patchwork fixes and political compromises. Each time a new problem surfaced—school crowding, industrial decline, downtown stagnation—leaders created another board, authority, or special committee to put a face on the issue. But none of these entities were ever consolidated or decommissioned after their purported purpose was served.
The result is a maze of overlapping offices that each claim progress while operating in isolation. Instead of streamlining systems, local government keeps adding more layers to promote its supposed importance to economic and cultural activity. What began as attempts to solve problems gradually built a structure that now resists solutions.
Nowhere is this fragmentation more visible—or more expensive—than in public education. Catawba County operates three separate school systems: Hickory City Schools, Newton-Conover, and Catawba County Schools. Each maintains its own superintendent, administrative staff, and support services, all paid for by the same taxpayers. Every district competes for teachers, resources, and reputation, even as enrollment declines and costs rise.
This structure once reflected civic pride and local identity, but it now represents duplication and inefficiency. Instead of combining strength, each system protects its autonomy, stretching limited funds across three bureaucracies. Families see the difference in aging facilities, program cuts, and inconsistent quality—but they also pay for it through higher taxes and slower improvements. A county this size doesn’t need three command centers; it needs one coherent plan for educating its children.
🚨 Separate Sirens: When Safety Costs Too Much
The same pattern exists in public safety. Catawba County, Hickory, and each town in Catawba County maintain their own police, fire, and emergency response systems, with separate command structures, dispatch centers, and budgets. Coordination works during major incidents, but day-to-day overlap creates unnecessary costs.
Equipment, training, and facility expenses multiply, even though emergencies don’t stop at city lines. A more unified approach to emergency management could reduce waste, improve service, and make better use of taxpayer dollars.
💼 One Region, Many Agendas: Economic Development Without Direction
Redundancy repeats in economic development. Catawba County has a central Economic Development Corporation (EDC), but every municipality still runs its own programs, incentives, and branding. The City of Hickory pursues downtown revitalization and business growth through its planning office, while the county and the EDC focus on industrial recruitment. Newton, Conover, and other towns run their own initiatives, often targeting the same companies or grants. Each group means well, but they rarely move in sync.
The Western Piedmont Council of Governments (WPCOG) was created to bridge these divides — to coordinate planning, transportation, housing, and infrastructure efforts across Alexander, Burke, Caldwell, and Catawba Counties. Its mission is regional cooperation, but over time that mission has become administrative rather than strategic. WPCOG manages grants, studies, and compliance programs, yet it lacks the authority or political backing to align local priorities into a single regional vision.
The result is a patchwork economy: Catawba County recruits industry, Hickory chases redevelopment, and adjacent counties compete for the same limited projects instead of building complementary strengths. The Foothills Corridor should function as one connected region, yet it behaves like a series of separate towns fighting for attention. Everyone spends more to accomplish less. Real progress will require leadership willing to use WPCOG’s framework not just for paperwork, but for purpose — one playbook, one direction, and shared accountability.
🛠️ Infrastructure in Silos: The Geography of Waste
The consequences of divided governance become clearest in public infrastructure. Roads, water systems, broadband networks, and transit projects require cooperation across city and county lines, yet they are often planned and funded in isolation. Hickory may build a sidewalk that stops at its border, while the next town over designs a road improvement with no connection to it. County plans move on different timelines, and priorities shift with each election cycle. The result is a regional system that looks connected on paper but fails in practice.
There are exceptions. Greenway Public Transportation, operated through the Western Piedmont Council of Governments and governed by the Unifour Public Transportation Authority, unites four counties under a single regional transit system. It proves that shared infrastructure can work when local governments commit to one plan, one budget, and one purpose. The Catawba County Economic Development Corporation brings together the county, Hickory, Newton, and Conover for industrial recruitment, while the county’s Utilities and Engineering Department coordinates certain regional water and sewer services. Catawba Valley Community College also links education and workforce efforts across jurisdictions, and the Western Piedmont Workforce Board manages regional job-training programs.
Yet these partnerships highlight how limited coordination remains. They exist where convenience demands it—where grants or service delivery make cooperation unavoidable—but not where strategy requires it. Each jurisdiction still competes for state and federal funding instead of pooling resources to meet long-term regional goals. Projects that could strengthen the entire corridor—like expanded broadband, joint utility expansion, or a unified growth plan—stall in the name of local control. What gets built reflects who has leverage, not what makes sense. A region that can’t synchronize its own foundation will never convince new industries that it can support theirs.
The persistence of fragmentation is not an accident—it’s the product of incentives. Every layer of government wants to keep its own authority, budget, and visibility. Elected officials defend their turf because it guarantees influence, and boards protect their independence because consolidation would mean losing titles, offices, or funding streams. Even when leaders agree on shared goals, the competition for control outweighs the desire for results. Meetings become the substitute for progress. Committees form, reports are written, and studies are commissioned, but few decisions outlast the next round of elections.
This culture rewards risk avoidance over innovation. When the safest choice is to do nothing, stagnation becomes policy. Collaboration is talked about as an ideal but practiced as a liability, especially when credit for success might be shared. Many local leaders understand that duplication wastes money and slows progress, but few are willing to surrender even a small portion of their jurisdiction’s control to fix it. The system sustains itself not because it works, but because it protects those already inside it.
The cost of this divided system shows up in everyday life. Projects take longer, cost more, and rarely turn out the way they were promised. Taxpayers end up paying for the same jobs to be done three different ways. For example, each school system buys its own software and hires its own staff, even though one system could handle it for everyone. Local boards chase the same grants, and different departments study the same problems over and over. All that duplication wastes money and time.
It also wears people down. Residents see the same issues—roads, schools, housing—talked about year after year with little real change. Businesses hesitate to invest when simple projects take months of meetings and paperwork. Nonprofits spend more time competing for funding than helping people. In the end, the community pays twice: once through taxes and again through lost chances to make progress.
When people stop believing the system can solve problems, they stop paying attention. Fewer citizens show up to meetings, fewer new leaders get involved, and the same small group keeps running things. What starts as a paperwork problem turns into a community problem—because when no one trusts the system, the system stops working.
💰 Expansion Without Benefit: When Growth Serves Government First
At some point, public service becomes self-service. Across Catawba County, major projects are often sold to residents as proof of progress—new data centers, industrial parks, or incentive deals that promise “growth.” But when you look closer, many of these developments add little to everyday life. They raise tax receipts without creating jobs that match local skill levels. They use public funds and infrastructure to support private gain, while the average household sees higher bills and the same struggles. This is how government ends up serving government—chasing revenue to sustain its own salary structure instead of delivering real improvement for the people it represents.
Residents are told that large projects will lift the economy, but few stop to ask who is actually being lifted. A new data center may boost the tax base, but it employs only a handful of people. The same officials who promote these deals also preside over wasteful duplication—three school systems, multiple boards, and redundant agencies that absorb every new dollar of revenue before it reaches the public. The result is a cycle of expansion without benefit: new offices, more meetings, higher spending, and no measurable increase in prosperity.
The logic behind it is simple but misguided. Leaders want visible wins and secure budgets, so they chase projects that make government look busy and important. Yet real success isn’t measured in tax receipts or ribbon cuttings—it’s measured in whether people can afford homes, find good jobs, and trust that their leaders are using money wisely. What starts as an government administrative problem turns into a community problem. When people stop believing their government can get results, they lose trust, and the whole system weakens.
⚖️ Reclaiming Accountability: Lowering the True Cost of Control
The real challenge isn’t money or manpower—it’s mindset. The systems that run Catawba County and its cities were built to protect authority, not to share it. Every agency wants to prove its importance, so coordination is treated as a threat instead of a strength. But when control becomes the goal, progress stops being possible. A community cannot solve regional problems with a patchwork of local fiefdoms that refuse to work together.
Reform will not come from another committee or consultant’s report. It will come from leadership willing to trade individual credit for collective gain. That means merging overlapping departments, consolidating school systems, and setting one regional plan for infrastructure and economic growth. It means using data to track results, not intentions. It means holding every public body—city, county, or regional—to the same standard of efficiency and accountability.
The public deserves a government that delivers outcomes, not excuses. Hickory and Catawba County have the talent and resources to move forward, but not under the weight of a system that prizes control over cooperation. The cost of control is measured in wasted time, lost trust, and missed opportunity. Lowering that cost starts with courage—the willingness of leaders to put results ahead of rank and serve the people instead of the process.
Cheat Sheet – The Cost of Control
Fragmented governance doesn’t just waste tax dollars—it weakens the very systems that support work itself. The cost of control isn’t only measured in lost efficiency—it’s measured in lost opportunity.
The next structural failure lies in the labor market itself. Hickory’s economy has become compressed, with too many people competing for too few stable, well-paying jobs. What began as bureaucratic fragmentation has trickled down into personal stagnation. The region is working harder than ever but moving nowhere.
