Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors

Janet Gray Hayes, San Jose’s first female mayor and the first woman to lead a major US city, died Monday in the Saratoga home she shared with her daughter.

With the Sunnyvale Armory slated for demolition to make way for permanent low-income housing, north Santa Clara County stands to lose its only cold-weather shelter.

Santa Clara County supervisors want to bring electronic cigarettes and vapes under the purview of existing anti-smoking laws.

The stink of ex-Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. has dissipated, and Santa Clara County is focused on a fresh start for 2014. “Scandal is no longer in the air,” Supervisor Ken Yeager said after Tuesday’s State of the County speech, delivered by recently sworn-in Board President Mike Wasserman. “We certainly spent most of last year changing and improving public outreach and creating much more transparency than there was before.” Wasserman’s address focused on the county’s role as a safety net for the most vulnerable, while also highlighting the little-known services it provides for residents.

Given that clientele often overlaps, Santa Clara County will integrate its departments of Drug and Alcohol Services and Mental Health. Also, on the agenda for Tuesday’s county Board of Supervisors meeting: a new name for the South County Airport, making campaign disclosure forms available online and funding an anti-terrorism law enforcement communications network.

Disgraced former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. will spend the next year in jail for his pilfering of campaign funds. Judge Daniel T. Nishigaya on Friday sentenced Shirakawa, who pleaded guilty this spring to five felonies and seven misdemeanors, to a year behind bars, minus one day served. Following the ruling, he was immediately escorted out of court and taken into custody. A source within the county Sheriff’s Office tells San Jose Inside that Shirakawa will spend his time behind bars in Alameda County. He will receive probation for three years following his release.

California’s Fair Political Practices Commission confirmed Friday that it is investigating George Shirakawa Jr.’s failure to file campaign disclosure statements for the past four years. Shirakawa is president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, which oversees a $4 billion annual budget. The campaign law violations were detailed Wednesday in a cover story in the weekly newspaper Metro.

Although a worker at the Santa Clara County Registrar’s Office said this afternoon that there are still a few ballots straggling in, Teresa Alvarado has thrown in the towel in her bid for the District 1 Supervisor’s seat. “I finished just 62 votes short of a second-place finish. Clearly, every vote counts,” she wrote in a statement. Although the gap between Alvarado and former City Council member Forrest Williams was just a few dozen votes, former Los Gatos mayor Mike Wasserman trounced both candidates in the primary by over 14,000 votes.