I'm not surprised one bit. Logic goes out the door when these types of issues are debated by council. One council member said the building reminded her of the Surfside condo collapse and that was a large part of her reasoning. When those types of perspectives are on the table, all the things you guys are talking about, go right out of the door.
Overall (there are a very few exceptions), I think we have one of the least effective and disappointing (to put it kindly) City Councils in a long time due to a lack of backbone, vision, forward thinking, creativity, moral principles, civic responsibility, respect for differing points of view, energy, passion, inquisitiveness, being fully and legitimately informed and, maybe, just plain intellect.
This is compounded by corruption due to donor monies, laziness, selfishness, excessive ambition, over-inflated egos, partisanship, conflicts of interests, cliques and general submissiveness to the mayor and special interests.
All this begets a collective City Council that rubber stamps developer (and billionaire NFL owner) exceptions and giveaways along with terrible business and financial deals while basic City needs such as parks, roads, traffic control, garbage collection, social needs, urban renewal, resiliency, reduction in crime, environment, historic preservation and so much more gets unmet or mismanaged.
In the end, our voters (or lack thereof) get a big part of the blame, being sucked in by false TV ads and failing to fully do their due diligence on the candidates or to more actively participate in the electoral process. This behavior also tends to discourage more competent candidates from entering the arena. Tim Baker's nasty campaign MO has also succeeded in running off better candidates in my opinion and it shows.
