I've worked with councillors for over 20years and here is the boring truth of it: You have good, bad and indifferent ones. I daresay the same is true in any other walk of life.
This is without political prejudice too. I've met some excellent Tory councillors and some awful Labour ones (and vice versa and the same is true of all other parties). Even where they're not very good, most of them want to try and improve the places where we live. You can criticise how they do that (and as I was saying yesterday, you should do where you see failure) but generally they are doing their best and for the right reasons.
Don't underestimate how much local authorities are constrained by both central government and overall finance either. It's easy to say councillors should do more but their opportunity to do so is not always in their gift.
I'm not saying they're perfect or deserve sympathy or anything like that. Just providing a bit of balance.