Your footnote misses the point. This sort of thing does happen, but not because people would want "perfect or nothing." It happens because people want to close down the homeless shelter.
You need to study some Kafka "The Trial" to understand how extreme bureaucracy functions. There's no subversive logic to the irrationality of most of these institutions. It's mostly just apathetic failure.
You need to study some real life, and not fiction, to understand that for the irrationality of any bureaucracy is only set into motion by players in the real world, with motives of some fashion, good, bad or indifferent.
Bureaucracy and its many, many processes are the symptom, not the disease.
You don't need to read books to get the gist of local politics. Peoples' motivations are simple and plain on the surface. Nobody is sitting around going "my god, we have no choice but to close this homeless shelter. Cursed ADA regulations!"
In this case, there was no movement or campaign against it, it was pure apathy. A vote to grant them a variance has been on the agenda for nearly 3 years now waiting for them to get around to it. Most people agree that this should happen as soon as they find the time ("staff", ie the council's lawyer needs to study the insurance implications etc). Meanwhile another winter is coming. They'll open it back up as soon as they're sure they can do it "right".
