WET may have had its entertainment permit pulled, but the club will open for some October events and is still making news. The owners of the nightclub have sued the City of San Jose, claiming that the SJPD’s decision to pull the plug and revoke its license violates its constitutional rights. Police claim that the club was a public nuisance: over the course of five months, SJPD reports, its owners were given 49 chances to rectify problems ranging from serving alcohol to minors to a stabbing on the dance floor.

When the recession ends (if it’s not over already) throngs of Generation Y-ers can be expected to flock to San Jose as one of the hippest places in the country. A team of experts from the Wall Street Journal used a variety of parameters to decide which cities will be the up-and-coming “youth magnets” over the next few years. All the biggies made the list, with Seattle and Washington DC tied for the top spot just ahead of San Jose, and so did some of the nation’s smaller cities, such as Portland and Raleigh.

One of the first targets of state officials desperate for money to close the budget deficit were California’s redevelopment agencies. In 2008, the state took $350 million from them, and this year it plans to take more than $2 billion. But the agencies are fighting back…and winning. A State Superior Court judge ruled that the confiscation of funds in 2008 was unconstitutional because the money was earmarked specifically for development projects. Last week the state dropped its appeal, with repercussions for the 2009 court case that the agencies have initiated.

The ruling could have enormous repercussions for San Jose.

At the San Jose Redevelopment Agency, 24 staff members are about to get laid off—out of a total staff of 109. The decision, called “heart-wrenching” by Agency head Harry Mavrogenes, was the inevitable outcome of a state raid on the RDA’s funds in an effort to cover Sacramento’s own deficit. This year the state is grabbing $62 million; next year it plans to take another $13 million. All of this is in addition to the $13 million that the state took in 2008. The layoffs will save the RDA about $3.1 million.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the greenest of them all? San Francisco claims it is, but so do Seattle, Portland, and even Detroit, home of the Big Three automakers. Since he came into office, Mayor Chuck Reed has been pitching San Jose is as the nation’s green capital, and he will prove it to anyone who doubts him.

San Jose Inside has confirmed that Club Wet in Downtown San Jose’s SoFA District has had its entertainment permit suspended. Police Chief Robert Davis has power to shut a club under San Jose’s emergency ordinance. A four minute video clip of a dance floor brawl at Wet was posted to YouTube this week.  Update: Wet was served late Friday. Club officials say the timing gave them no opportunity to challenge the action in court. The club will be open and be able to serve alcohol and play music, just won’t have live entertainment.

Just a few years ago Ed Munyak, a fire protection engineer for the city of San Jose, seemed like a lonely, out-there figure, a sometimes-target because of his outspoken position on the events of Sept. 11, 2001. These days, hundreds of other building trade professionals have joined him in challenging the official narrative about the collapse of three buildings at New York’s World Trade Center (WTC) on that fateful, traumatic day.

While the idea sounded good in principle, City Council members are finding that it’s not as easy as it seems to put all the text messages that they receive about city business on the municipal record. The city is currently considering a policy that would make all personal electronic communications about official matters public. Ideally, the policy would include all personal emails, text messages, and even Facebook postings. But as Councilman Pete Constant learned, there is no way for him to transfer text messages from his personal iPhone to the municipal email system.

Municipal whistle-blowers—and political shysters—may no longer be protected by anonymity, if a proposal by the city’s Elections Commission is approved. The proposal suggests that all written complaints of improprieties be signed before they are submitted to a law firm for investigation, and that callers to the anonymous tip hotline state their precise relationship to the person they are accusing.

The proposal was made in response to a series of allegations surrounding former mayor Tom McEnery, which ultimately were found to have no merit.

A report commissioned by San Jose’s Office of Economic Development claims that relocating the Oakland A’s to San Jose would add $130 million to the local economy and create as many 2,100 jobs, almost 1,000 of them new jobs. The anticipated economic benefit to the city is expected to approach $3 billion over the next thirty years. Beneficiaries of the move would include local schools, which can expect to see as much as $842,000 per year from it, and Santa Clara County, which would get $948,000 because of a profit sharing agreement with the city in redevelopment areas.

Representatives of the city’s police, firefighters, and city workers unions and retirees are up in arms over plans to restructure the boards that oversee their pensions. Their pension funds lost almost one-quarter of their value in the recent stock market plummet, leaving them with $3.2 billion. Now the city is planning to replace its representatives on the oversight board with council-appointed delegates who do not work for the city or do business with it.

San Jose moved one step closer yesterday to implementing a citywide Bring Your Own Bag policy. A four-member City Council committee voted unanimously to prohibit grocery stores and major retailers from handing out plastic bags to their customers. Taking the issue one step further, they also voted to ban most paper bags, unless they are made of at least 50 percent recycled material. Even then, customers will be required to pay a fee in order to receive the paper bags.

Local kids (and parents) may have known it instinctively, but now they have the facts to back it up: It’s great to be a kid in San Jose. 

U.S. News & World Report has just ranked San Jose as the nation’s third most kid-friendly city. Only Virginia Beach (pop. 433,000) and Madison, Alabama, (pop. 43,000) ranked higher.

California believes that it can save as much as $1 billion by releasing non-violent inmates from prison. Santa Clara County DA Dolores Carr admits that, but says that in practice it amounts to decriminalizing property crimes—such as car theft, grand theft, commercial burglary, and writing bad checks—by reducing them to misdemeanors. “This is really going to cause an increase in crime in our local communities,” she wrote in a letter to the governor.

Anyone who’s watched an open meeting of City Council will have seen council members fiddle with their iPhones and Blackberries to check their latest emails or text messages. Councilmember Sam Liccardo now argues that those messages should be disclosed to the public as part of the city’s policy on open governance.

“Council meetings are open to the public for a reason,” Liccardo says, “and if we’re voting on a matter and outside groups are using private means to communicate with us about how we should or shouldn’t vote, the public ought to know what’s being said and who’s saying it.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, 93-year-old Judge Paul Teilh sat in his office the fourth floor of Santa Clara County’s Hall of Justice building, with his head buried in his hands. The office was almost empty, and his desk was covered with brownies, cake, sprinkled doughnuts, and several gifts. Throughout the day, several people passed through his office wishing him farewell, believing it would be his last day on the bench. However, Teilh was not ready to leave.