You’ve just had the scale falling experience of dealing with local government, which exists primarily to justify its own existence, but sadly it rarely disappears up it own arse. You may view this as overly rhetorical, positively florid in fact and yet there are certainly positive aspects to local municipalities, but none that require the low and sometimes not so low grade corruption, frequent employment of exemplars of the Dunning Kruger effect, ill understood legislation with which Arthur Dent would be familiar and the hideous profligate waste of ratepayers hard earned coin. Not so much crooked, but rather the kind of circular on the margin corruption that happens in high trust economies. Aaah I feel so much better now, time for a succulent Chinese meal.