People are often discontented at the local council level because they don't understand that councillors have very little real power. Councils are largely agents for the government. They can do nothing unless they have been given specific legal powers to do it, and some elements of their funding are literally tied to certain government priorities. (Money for cycle lanes is one example, although you'd never guess it from how Conservatives talk.) They have also had their funding slashed massively over the last decade or more, and yet everyone expects everything to carry on as before and work perfectly. This is not realistic.
Any development is assumed to be linked to brown-envelope knockbacks, though it's very odd that no councillors ever seem to be prosecuted. One can only think it's because there's no evidence! It seems to me people hate change. Any change. Older people are particularly bad at this, and I speak as one. Yeah, I miss steam trains and trolleybuses but so fucking what? We have to look to the future, not the past, especially as the past was generally much shittier than people like to admit.