Somewhere behind the "city" is hopefully a professional engineer (P.E.) who had to sign off on all of this. That's who's going to care if you find his/her timings are set incorrectly either on purpose or accidentally. And once it has been brought to their attention they had better be going to change it. So no, the politicians may or may not care about the signal timing, but their P.E. should.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm of the opinion if you know something is wrong and have the means to fight it, do so. That would be one less signal timed incorrectly, but there are a lot of citizens, and only a few people in government. It all adds up. The government "works for us." Make them. I'm sure I don't know about other parts of government, but I'm hoping those who do will speak up and change it if it's wrong.
When it becomes well known the lights aren't timed correctly they are all going to fight them, which means all of those cases are going to get tied up in the judicial system. Yes it takes our time, but it also takes the city's time to lose each of them.
"Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties" from the ASCE code of ethics. If the P.E. gets called out for intentionally shorting the yellow interval they are in a world of trouble in staying licensed.
Your third paragraph is on a tangent, I'll leave it be. And don't worry about ranting as long as you have coherent thoughts to discuss.