San Jose officials want a say in the loosening of Bay Area coronavirus restrictions

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo would like the city to have a say over which businesses will be the first to resume operation when Bay Area health officials ease restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In a memo to a city committee meeting, Liccardo requested that city staff create a team tasked to work with Santa Clara County officials to identify specific job categories now deemed “nonessential” but “appear relatively safe to consider as early candidates for a staged reopening of the economy.”

“We have to expand our focus from saving lives to also include saving livelihoods,” Liccardo said in an interview after the meeting on Wednesday. “If it’s simply six or seven public health officials and there’s no information going in or out, that is going to be very challenging for everyone and it’s probably not going to work well.”

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected at least 1,987 people and killed 95 in Santa Clara County, has caused hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents to lose income and file for unemployment in recent weeks.

The mayor’s memo comes as some counties across the state are beginning to loosen the mandates they initially imposed about a month ago to allow some employees to go back to work. Napa County, for instance, on Tuesday modified its stay-at-home order to reopen golf courses and allow all construction to resume.

Santa Clara and the other Bay Area counties, which banded together to impose the country’s first stay-at-home order, have yet to announce loosening restrictions here, which are in place until at least May 3.

Liccardo’s memo outlined a handful of steps for city staff to take to prepare for residents to return to work safely, including clearing construction permitting backlogs, identifying protocols the city can take to enforce social distancing when all construction resumes and working with the county to determine “thresholds for surveillance testing and contact tracing required for substantial and safe resumption of economic activity in our region.”

“The hope was first ensuring that internally we could do all we could to be ready — for example clearing whatever backlogs we have on inspections and permits — so that when the light turns green based on the direction of our public health authorities, we’ll have people ready to go back to work,” Liccardo said during the committee meeting.

While County Executive Jeff Smith said his team “welcomes the city’s input and interest in participating” in the process, he took issue with one request in the mayor’s memo.

Liccardo has asked the city attorney to review Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide order and provide the city council with his opinion — during a closed session — on whether the county or state order supersedes the other on what categories of construction are permitted to continue during the pandemic. The stricter Bay Area order currently prohibits any residential construction that does not include at least 10 percent affordable units.

Smith said the city had “no justification” to discuss the matter behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny “unless they’re talking about suing someone.”

“If we’re talking about transparency and involvement, there’s no reason to be in closed session,” he said. “And I think it’s pretty clear in the law, that the public health officers have the ultimate authority about public health.”

According to Liccardo, he added that request to his list because of questions he and other city officials had received from affected stakeholders, such as union leaders. He said cities like San Jose are often threatened with litigation over decisions like this and closed session is “where all discussion goes between the city attorney and the council regarding topics of likely litigation.”

But in his memo, the mayor also seemed to take issue with the dividing line drawn by health officials.

“Obviously, there is no health-based distinction between allowing construction of a housing project at various levels of affordability, or an office or retail or industrial project,” Liccardo wrote in his memo. “If anything, the lower density of appliances and finishings in an office or industrial project should make those job sites inherently safer, because greater distance can be maintained between construction workers.”

Councilmember Johnny Khamis agreed with the mayor’s sentiments, saying that he wanted “more influence over the discussion” of choosing what businesses could resume operations before others, specifically stating that he supported resuming outdoor construction and opening up golf courses.

“If we don’t look for ways to jumpstart this economy then our problems are going to compound. They’re not going to get easier to solve,” Khamis said during the meeting. “That urgency needs to be stated.”

“It absolutely needs to be done safely but that county should be giving us ways to restart these jobs safely,” he added.

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