The guy manages a city filled with his peers, all of which rose from an environment where competence is nurtured but knives are sharpened to get ahead, and which magic was used as a measuring stick for how above everyone else you were. The unbridled arrogance does not do well for creating a strike team at higher CR that you would trust to watch your back. So Zherys focuses on running the city or putting out what is currently on fire, instead of poking a snake that's content to sleep, because he's very much isolated as a person.
OOC he's expanding government services across Volantis because no one acted like this was an option worth pursuing during the initial voting phase and I've been too busy to put together some kind of retroactive vote for the dozens of side characters and what they should be doing.
Keep in mind we could just go straight to abstracting these things and only having control over minimal aspects of the world if only four or five people participate in compiling data for the turn plan. I'm sure they would hold no complaints about having to do less work.