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I hear the complaint reversed far more often. The standard complaint is that city councils weight complaints from normal people far too highly. Only a small unrepresentative subset of a city's population will show up to council meetings to lodge a complaint, so that small subset is massively over-represented in council decisions.

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City council listens to old residents with too much free time when they argue against an outcome you want. City councils ignore residents when they argue for an outcome you want. Such is the internet view on city councils.

> The standard complaint is that city councils weight complaints from normal people far too highly.

In most cases, what happens is they give a lot of weight to input from those who agree with the predestined outcome, and none to those who differ.

In these city meetings, all the decisions have been made behind closed door already (often with substantial greasing of the wheels), the open hearing are just for show.

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