Your scenario is very Coasian, isn't it?

If a community agrees to bind themselves by a set of rules, we think of that as some sort of revealed preference for how those people want group decisions to be made. A business coming along and buying enough votes to get their project approved is just a way of compensating the community sufficiently for the costs of the project.

It's not on the outsider to be worried about whether a community's rules are fair. If those rules don't work for the community, then they can change them or move away. One way or another, there's endogenous pressure to align the community rules with the real preferences of the members.