Councillors only do these things to get their name on a project and this enables them to puff their chests out and tell everyone what a good egg they are. We have them over here too. We live on a river that many years ago used to have barges on it, horse drawn. They spent money on a sculptured sail to signify the
History of the barges being moored up here. They then put in a tilt bridge, fully engineered, to replace a footbridge. They then put in a slip way for boats to be launched, which is blocked off with bollards. They brought a boat in by lorry, off-loaded it into the river, took some pictures, loaded the boat back on the lorry and took it away. They had to do this because the river is un-navigable and has been since the beginning of the 20th century to my knowledge. The water at the slipway is about 2 foot deep and there will never be any boats coming up here in the next 100 years at least. The last bit of navigable river is over 7 miles downstream. The amount of money spent on this must be huge and they justify it by saying that it is from grants and not from the council tax pot. To my mind waste is waste and it doesn't matter where it comes from. Piss poor management is what it boils down to but it may help for you to know that you are not on your own.