Mayor Ivy Taylor and several City Council members expressed a willingness Wednesday to restore impervious cover and light pollution proposals to the city’s SA Tomorrow sustainability plan, in particular citing the latter’s effect on area military bases.

But the door was left open to the development community participating in future discussions about the environmental measures.

The meeting marked the last time City Council as a whole will discuss SA Tomorrow before voting on it Aug. 11. SA Tomorrow is a three-pronged long-range plan that looks at comprehensive planning, multimodal transportation and sustainability.

The San Antonio Planning Commission approved all three plans last week but unexpectedly voted 5-4 to strip proposals that would potentially strengthen the city’s dark skies ordinance and the ordinance limiting asphalt and concrete, known as impervious cover.

On Wednesday, city staff pushed to keep the measures in the plan but suggested more engagement with a “broader stakeholder group” and tweaking the plan’s language. Deputy City Manager Peter Zanoni said that could include adding a phrase like “whether or not” the city should expand the ordinances.

Earlier, on the steps of City Hall, leaders of the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club and the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance said they want a shake-up in appointments to the city’s Planning Commission.

GEAA Director Annalisa Peace and Sierra Club group Chair Terry Burns said the council should appoint a more diverse set of members in October when many of their terms end. Council should also require the commission to meet in the evenings when more working people can attend, Peace said.

Peace and Burns also tied the commissioners’ votes to the positions of the Real Estate Council of San Antonio. At the Planning Commission meeting last week, the council’s president said his organization could not support that plan if those two proposals remained.

Commissioner Brad Carson, who made a motion to remove those proposals, is a member of the Real Estate Council, according to its website. Efforts to reach Carson and planning Commissioners Jason Koehne, Marcello Diego Martinez, George Peck and George McNair, who voted for the motion, were not successful Wednesday.

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for the Real Estate Council said its members have been closely involved with and supportive of the comprehensive plan and multimodal transportation plan but were not invited to participate in the development of the sustainability plan.

“The proposal that impervious cover limits should be applied citywide without a good reason is deeply concerning,” the statement says, which also argued the limits would drive up the cost of doing business by requiring more land for every project and increase sprawl, counter to many of the SA Tomorrow goals. “We are aware of no scientific rationale that has been put forth to support this proposal.”

The statement did not address the dark skies proposal. A Wednesday tweet from the real estate council’s account said it “fully supports current dark sky lighting regs around our military bases and the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone.”

But city Sustainability Director Doug Melnick told the City Council that excessive lighting affects wildlife, human health and energy efficiency.

“The intent of both of these is not to restrict development in any way” but rather to get these issues under control before greater problems emerge, Melnick said.

His presentation on the impervious cover limit included photos of some of the 12,000 fish killed in the Espada Acequia near the San Antonio River last week. San Antonio River Authority biologists tied the kill to a deluge of stormwater flowing off of impervious cover and into the acequia. SARA officials have spoken in favor of the proposal, saying more impervious cover can result in storm water moving faster, leading to flash floods.

Taylor said Wednesday she also sees the importance of adding some version of those proposals back into the sustainability plan.

“I’m open to what gets us to a reasonable place,” said Taylor, adding she doesn’t want this to become a pro- or anti-development fight. Several other council members also supported reinstatement of the measures.

During a public hearing Wednesday night, Real Estate Council President-Elect Cynthia Stevens said her organization supports the city’s recommendation to broaden the stakeholder discussion. Several other speakers, including one from the International Dark-Sky Association Texas section and Green Spaces Alliance, called for reinstating the dark skies and impervious cover proposals.

Most policy discussions over the city’s efforts to limit light pollution center on military installations. This week, James Cannizzo, an administrative and civil law adviser for the U.S. Army, sent an information paper to city officials recommending they keep both measures in the plan. Taylor said Wednesday she was somewhat swayed by the feedback from the military.

No vote was taken Wednesday, but council members aired various concerns and questions about the plans, which together total more than 1,000 pages — an epic document that’s meant to be a guidebook for future city decisions about land use, zoning and infrastructure. It’s projected an additional 1.1 million people will live in Bexar County by 2040, and SA Tomorrow is designed to help the city prepare for that growth.

If the city doesn’t try to rethink how it grows, rush-hour traffic delays in the next 20 years will increase by 900 percent, said Mike Frisbie, director of transportation and capital improvements.

The main issue now is how the plan goals are actually enacted.

“This is merely a framework for future action,” said District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg, tri-chair of SA Tomorrow.

The SA Tomorrow comprehensive plan identifies 13 regional centers in San Antonio where the city would like to focus growth, both residential and employment. Only three of those centers are on the South Side, which has seen dramatically less residential and commercial growth than the North Side.

City staff said the goal is to develop master plans for those regional centers in the next five years. District 3 Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran asked the city to consider master plans for the South Side regional centers first because it’s a “long overlooked and neglected area of town.”

Several neighborhood association leaders also spoke Wednesday. They fear the comprehensive plan will trump their individual neighborhood plans, and they were concerned about increased density in their neighborhoods. City staff has said those plans will remain intact and that the plan will push for density where appropriate.

Bianca Maldonado, with the Monticello Park Neighborhood Association and the newly formed Tier One Neighborhood Coalition, said the coalition plans to lobby the city over the next week and persuade them to make it a goal of the SA Tomorrow plan to ensure neighborhood plans are protected.

vdavila@express-news.net