You the citizen are an amateur with very little standing. Staff has undergone a Stockholm-like bonding with the lawyers and developers, and after hours and hours of work, they don't need you messing things up with inconvenient objections. Oh they will listen and nod in agreement with everything said about crowded roads, crowded schools, poor site drainage, historic landmarks, anything you want to bring up, but at the end of the day, this thing WILL be built. We wonder sometimes at the cynicism that pervades the American public. I think you can make the argument that this feeling of being alienated from the process begins right at home, right in our own backyards.
People like to feel that they are in control of their lives.
They like to think that they are raising their families in a stable environment, that their kids are going to go to great schools, that their neighborhoods are always going to stay nice and safe. In an ideal world, government would be seen by its citizens as an instrument that enhances this sense of control by providing a stable political environment within which to live and work. Government would be seen as an impartial force, one that provides a level playing field, regardless of privilege or wealth. Instead, many people see local government as a closed club, with the big companies and powerful local families on the inside and the average citizen on the outside. From this feeling of powerlessness grows resentment and then anger.