You don't even have to listen to the meeting, just take a look around. Here's one at Carson City[]. Notice something about the demographics? None of those people look like young family in need of their first home or condo. It's people old enough that already have a place, bought during the days while the getting was still good, and are looking to secure their property values. Maybe a few of them had bad luck or had a nasty divorce and lost their house and have no real estate now, but that's unlikely to be the majority of them.

There's almost no overlap between people on and with the means and time to go to planning and zoning meanings and the people who have the greatest marginal utility lowering the bar to owning a business or a home.

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Depends on the meeting type. If you go to whichever one involves the relevant committee or board extracting expensive concessions from mundane businesses you're gonna see more younger people because first time business owners tend to be the ones who get screwed the most because they blunder right into all the traps the system has prepositioned for such people.

I watched two brothers in their 30s who'd bought a 12-unit (they lived in it) go rounds with the city over all manner of petty bullshit that can be construed as a legitimate concern on paper but really isn't if you look at the totality of the situation. Ultimately they hired the law firm which was owned by a lifelong developer who was the head of the equivalent board in the next town over (i.e. someone who knew people) and suddenly none of those things were problems anymore.