The first member of the Occupy San Jose protests to be cited at City Hall climbed a large wall in the plaza and was still there as of Monday morning. The man, identified by another protester as Shaun O’Kelly, reportedly climbed the wall in protest of other members of the movement being removed from city property.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated from the original version. Occupy San Jose protestors did not relocate from City Hall to St. James Park. The standoff between Occupy San Jose protestors and City Hall resulted in the arrest of eight people early Friday morning. In response, protestors have vowed to continue airing their grievances with the nation’s financial inequalities.

Oakland A’s co-owner Lew Wolff wants to get a stadium built in San Jose, and he’s ready to purchase land in an effort to force MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s hand in deciding if the team can relocate. On Tuesday, the City Council is meeting in closed session to discuss the sale of six properties to Wolff. A deal with Wolff would only make up half of the 14 acres needed for the stadium’s construction.

With Republicans and Democrats in Washington still haggling over a possible federal funding compromise, the possibility of a government shutdown today looms ever more ominous. It has been almost two decades since the last shut down, so it is probably worth reminding ourselves of how it will likely impact everyone.

Yesterday, April 4, marked the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. To commemorate that tragic event, union workers nationwide held rallies to protest recent moves against workers’ rights to organize.

The San Jose McEnery Convention Center is in dire need of an upgrade to avoid losing business to rival venues in San Francisco and Santa Clara. The cost of just the most urgent improvement is $26.5 million. It’s money that the city doesn’t have—what the city does have is a $105 million deficit. On the other hand, the Convention Center brings in about $12.5 million to Downtown businesses, and this could be lost if no upgrade takes place.

Editor’s Note: The following was written by City Councilmember Nancy Pyle and included in her March newsletter. Pyle represents San Jose’s 10th District. On Wednesday, February 16th I traveled to Sacramento with Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen, Councilmembers Ash Kalra and Donald Rocha and Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Harry Mavrogenes. Our mission was to discuss the governor’s plan to eliminate Redevelopment Agencies statewide.

UPDATED WITH CORRECTION: Firefighters Union Local 230 and the city are on the verge of reaching an agreement that would reduce the deficit and possibly even get back some jobs. The most radical concession involves the introduction of a two-tiered retirement plan, and distinguishes between employees hired before and after the agreement is signed. It will be the first such plan for public employees in the entire country.

San Jose begins taxing medical marijuana dispensaries on Tuesday, following the passage of Measure U in the last election. To help ease the transition for dispensary owners, City Hall held a seminar on Monday morning on how to calculate and pay the 7 percent tax.

It started with a fruit stand more than seven decades ago, and emerged as one of the landmark local grocery stores in San Jose, with branches in Silver Creek and Santa Clara. On February 8, Cosentino’s will be shutting its doors one last time. The reason, according to Dominic Cosentino, is not just the economy but the shifting purchasing habits of Americans over the last few decades: “Everything is favoring the big-box stores today.”

Eighteen months after leading the local battle against gay marriage—and shortly after an aborted plan to move to Tracy and run for U.S. Congress—Larry Pegram promised that his campaign for San Jose City Council would be about fixing the city’s pressing money troubles, not social issues. Since that time, Pegram has emphasized his commitment to balanced budgets and cited his own credentials as a professional financial planner.

City Manager Debra Figone held a press conference late last night to announce that the San Jose budget deficit, long estimated at $116 million, is the result of an accounting error and a misplaced decimal point. The real deficit is one order of magnitude smaller—just $11.6 million. Figone attributed to the error to the furloughs imposed on city employees: “With fewer employees and less time, no one has gone over the figures until now. It really does make a difference where you put the decimal point in your Excel spreadsheet.”

San Jose hockey fans must deal with a conundrum this afternoon, as the United States and Canada battle for Olympic gold. Do we root for the US team, or root for our home team?

Four San Jose Sharks—Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Dany Heatley and Dan Boyle—make up the backbone of Team Canada. They have been key to Canada’s success, working together in what TV announcer Kenny Albert has called “the San Jose connection.” Only one Shark—Joe Pavelski—is playing for Team USA.

Last Friday a thousand notables from high tech companies, public utilities, hospitals, local governments and NGO’s filled 96 tables at the McEnery Convention Center to hear about the State of the Valley according to the 2010 Silicon Valley Index, released by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.  “The Index has a lot of bad news this year,” said Russell Hancock, Joint Venture’s president.

Back in 2006, Jorge Trujillo was allegedly beaten up in San Jose by two strangers, Daniel Miller, 19, and Edward Sample, 20, wielding baseball bats. He managed to stumble away from the scene, and got over a mile away, bumping into cars along the way, according to police. Finally, someone called 911 and reported him to the police. When they arrived, Trujillo refused to speak with them or even let them approach, so the officers did what they were trained to do: they tased him. Trujillo died in hospital the next day.

With the murder trial underway in San Jose, the question being asked is to what degree did the tasing contribute to his death? Would he have died from the beating alone, meaning that Miller and Sample are guilty of murder, or was it the tasing that pushed him over the edge.

You gotta hand it to Carly Fiorina. Love her or hate her, you can’t help watching her Internet-only ad, and that’s what campaign ads are all about—getting eyeballs. Described as everything from an SNL skit to what would happen if the kid from The Omen directed Teletubbies, it’s already gotten 375,000 hits in Youtube, and the number keeps going up and up.