[zucchini_head]

Just skim-read through that story. Sounds pretty part-and-parcel for these kind of things, it's the same where I live too (UK).

The first step is always to include irrelevant statistics, since this bulks-up the case with "we are good people" rabble, and makes it harder to understand. It's essentially used to drown-out the key details of the case and to slow things down by making it much longer to read.

One of my older family members has been a council (our version of states I suppose) member for over 40 years, and some of the stories I hear are incredible.

I've heard stories of people submitting 300+ page testimonials and hundreds of correspondence over just 1-2 days just over small renovations, purely to obfuscate the case's legitimate and important details that are against their favour.

I'm really glad people are documenting things like this so we can actually see how bad it is getting...

[maxerickson]

Town councils are approximately the same level of government as cities/counties in the states.

(there are also often township governments that operate inside of counties, but modern travel makes them kind of stupid and there is a lot of at least de facto passing of authority up to the county level).