SAN JOSE — Several San Jose City Council members and staffers at City Hall have signed non-disclosure agreements with Google to discuss the tech giant’s plans to build a massive corporate village near Diridon Station.

According to emails obtained by the Mercury News, Vice Mayor Magdalena Carrasco, her chief of staff, Frances Herbert, Councilwoman Dev Davis’s chief of staff, Mary Anne Groen, and David Low, the mayor’s communications director, signed the NDAs.

A number of other people at City Hall, including Mayor Sam Liccardo, received emails in February 2017 asking them to sign NDAs. Low said by email Wednesday that Liccardo had signed the agreement.

City Attorney Rick Doyle said during a phone interview he thought around 10 people in total had signed the agreement.

NDAs are not at all unusual in real-estate dealings, but some have questioned whether city officials elected by and accountable to the public should be signing them.

“I’ve never heard of that,” said Bob Staedler, former real estate manager for the city’s now-defunct Redevelopment Agency.

“We’re outraged,” said Salvador Bustamante, executive director of Latinos United for a New America and a member of the group Silicon Valley Rising. “This smacks of a smoke-filled backroom deal.”

The prospect of bringing Google to downtown San Jose has sparked backlash among some residents and businesses concerned about skyrocketing property values and gentrification.

But signing non-disclosure forms are “becoming common,” Doyle said, particularly with tech companies interested in developing property in the city.

“Anyone who is suggesting that an NDA with a technology company is somehow unique or unusual is either unfamiliar with standard business practices or is being intentionally misleading to advance their own agenda,” said Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

People who received the NDA were provided a link to accept the agreement online.

The 11-point agreement says in part, “A party (the “Discloser”) may disclose to the other party (the “Recipient”) information pertaining to the Purpose that the Discloser considers confidential (“Confidential Information”)…Recipient must use a reasonable degree of care to protect Confidential Information and to prevent any unauthorized use or disclosure of Confidential Information.”

Google’s officials referred questions on the agreements to the city.

Doyle said Google wanted city officials to sign NDAs to discuss the development — expected to include millions of square feet of office space and thousands of Google workers — during the lead-up to last summer, when the company and city agreed to negotiate exclusively for the sale of city-owned properties near Diridon Station.

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Now that the City Council has approved a $67 million sale price for nine parcels of land downtown and an advisory group of community members to weigh in on the project has been assembled, Doyle said the conversation will be much more open.

“We’ve charted a very open and transparent process that ensures the public has an opportunity to review and weigh-in on proposed agreements before they’re approved,” Low echoed. “In fact, 15 different public agencies will hold public meetings to debate and sign-off on the proposed sale price for this group of publicly-owned properties.”