Ah, but are your neighbors all out there making their feelings known? The elected officials of your town can only steal your right to determine what sort of town you will live in if good men sit back and do nothing.
Not to say that you are doing nothing, but what are your neighbors doing? Are they content to let you take care of it, or are they actively working for change - remember that bit about people getting the sort of government they deserve? Does that make more sense to you now? ;)
In any case, they can never really thwart the will of the majority - if, that is, the majority will drop the TV remote and get up off of its butt. The question you have to ask is, can you win this on your own, or will you need the rest of your neighbors walking beside you? And if you do, are you willing to wait around until they see the same problem that you do, and are motivated to do more about it than complain around the dinner table?
And if you can't effect change on your own, either because the majority is too complacent to assist you, or because they're actively thwarting you, then you always have the ultimate protest - vote with your feet, since this town will clearly not be a good fit for you any longer.
The vast majority of people in my town just want someone to pave the roads, take care of the garbage collection, create nice parks, etc. We are constantly assaulted (overwhelmingly on the liberal side) with stuff that no one wants (bilingual education when the parents don't want it, homosexual Boy Scout scoutmasters, porn and masturbation in the town library, all sorts of educational theory claptrap in our schools (which will take years to fail, while our kids are at school), schools' telling our kids that condoms protect well against VD (they don't), etc. etc. What's depressing is the need to constantly fight to keep the government from doing ever new stuff that harms our kids and our families. But on the bright side, the country is turning more conservative, as people are getting tired everywhere of the same.