One way of looking at it is to ask yourself the question "Are we going to max out this town?" Or to look at it from the other angle, are you going to get the bank, shops and residences to their highest level and then be happy with a town hall still at level 1? If you're going to be happy to leave it at that then, yes, it might be seen as a waste to build the town hall.
If, on the other hand, you'd end up building your town until it had the full 42800 points - to get that sense of completion - then sooner or later, you're going to need to build the town hall. If you leave it until last then it'll have given you no benefit. If you build it earlier then it will have helped - perhaps not much, admittedly, but it will have helped nevertheless.
Building the town hall after everything else has been completed - that's the real waste of money.