> The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?)
This doesn't happen because nobody cares. It happens because the financing dries up, or labor is straight up not available. And that still comes back to money.
I had my renovation stall for 6 weeks because someone at Mass DEP couldn't be arsed to approve an asbestos abatement work plan. My contractor called the guy's boss and it was approved the next day.
Wouldn't surprise me to find out that they are trying to do it with way too few people and in your case, the squeaky wheel got the grease, and you jumped to the front of the line.
This is definitely true of the building department here. They're understaffed in part due to the inability to come to a new union contract agreement, which means that pay has stagnated.
Or the local powers that be sink their teeth in and the project isn't lucrative enough for its backers to let them just leave with a pound of flesh so progress stalls.
That's not a satisfactory explanation, because you're saying that the owner of the land can't make use of it and should have given it to someone else, but they don't actually care what the best use of the land is, so they take the slow way.
This doesn't happen because nobody cares. It happens because the financing dries up, or labor is straight up not available. And that still comes back to money.