SAN JOSE — In its final meeting of the year, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday will consider continuing tax breaks to downtown high-rise residential developers for several more years — an idea that’s drawn fire from organized labor, housing advocates and community leaders.

Mayor Sam Liccardo and downtown Councilman Raul Peralez say the incentive will boost construction activity including a handful of stalled residential projects, but not everyone is convinced.

“We continue to have to subsidize the downtown, as opposed to Santana Row. When they propose new tall buildings across the city, they’re not asking for incentives,” said Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio. “And if the city reduces fees, will we get it back in property tax revenue?”

Oliverio says he supports the goal of a dense downtown, but is “concerned about payback and (whether) other parts of the city will have the same expectations.”

And South Bay labor leaders are blasting the city for not requiring a “local hire policy” in exchange for the incentive, which ensures their union workers are offered the construction jobs first and benefit from the new development.

“The proposal to extend the high-rise subsidy gives developers a huge incentive to hire out-of-state workers who are getting paid poorly,” said Ben Field, executive officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council. “Instead the city should look for every opportunity to create middle-class jobs instead of poverty-wage jobs.”

A local hire policy would require contractors to pay construction workers the prevailing wage and to ensure at least 35 percent of the workers live in Santa Clara County. If a compromise isn’t reached, labor leaders have threatened to go to voters with a ballot initiative similar to Measure JJJ in Los Angeles, which passed in November and requires contractors to offer at least 30 percent of work-hours to city residents. Field said the idea is “overwhelmingly popular” here.

Liccardo and Peralez are proposing continuing an incentive that offers a half-off discount on construction-related taxes and parks fees to developers of apartment towers in the downtown core that are least 12 stories.

The parks fees incentive began in 2007 and the construction tax break in 2012. Extending them will save developers $17.9 million in fees for projects already in the pipeline, city documents show. Projects must break ground by July 2018 and be done by December 2020 to qualify.

If approved Tuesday, the program would be the second incentive offered to residential high-rise developers in downtown San Jose — they’re currently exempt for five years from an affordable housing fee that charges $17-per-square foot on new rental projects.

Parks advocates worry about how continuing to slash parks fees will impact the city’s goal of providing 3.5 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents — which it’s failing to meet today. “It continues to cut into the ability for the parks department to acquire land,” said Helen Chapman who chaired the city’s Parks and Recreation Committee when the incentive started in 2007.

But Liccardo and Peralez say something needs to be done to stir downtown development. A new high-rise tower hasn’t broken ground since February 2015, despite a boom in other development across Silicon Valley.

“We have heard roundly from the development industry that while many projects have obtained permits, or sit on the verge of doing so, the financing required to begin construction remains beyond their reach,” the pair wrote in a joint memo, adding that constructions costs have increased by 60 percent in the past 36 months.

One land use consultant said high construction costs, land prices and height restrictions because of the airport make downtown apartment towers the “most complicated” projects.

“Everyone wants to mitigate risk and the length of construction makes it difficult to anticipate where the housing market will be — whether high or low,” said Bob Staedler, a principal at Silicon Valley Synergy.

But the incentive is not a “giveaway of public money,” Liccardo and Peralez argue, because if the stalled projects never break ground, the city gains nothing from property tax revenue.

They also said increasing dense housing supply near transit can reduce soaring Silicon Valley rents and cost-of-living — an argument one affordable housing expert says doesn’t quite pencil out.

Adding more “luxury apartments” — like the ones in downtown that rent for nearly $3,000 — provides no relief to low-income renters, said Andrew Aurand, vice president for research at the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, D.C.

“It does not work for the lowest income renters because landlords don’t have the incentive to provide units at that rent,” Aurand said. “It doesn’t filter down.”