After Mayor Chuck Reed and most of the San Jose City Council took a two-hour tongue lashing Tuesday from city employees, retirees, union representatives and even staffers of several state legislators, the council voted 8-3 to push forward with Reed’s declaration of “fiscal and public safety emergency.” That word—”emergency”—allows the city to significantly toughen its stance in pension negotiations with public employees.

When politicians have bad news to deliver, news they don’t really want anyone to hear, they’ll often deliver it at a Friday afternoon press conference—nobody watches the TV news on Friday night and nobody reads the paper on Saturday. But Mayor Chuck Reed’s announcement last Friday that San Jose is in a “fiscal and public safety emergency” was like a big squirt of gasoline on the smoldering heap of embers that is the city’s relationship with its public-employee unions. And the resulting flare-up did not go unnoticed.

Before word leaked out through the usual channels that councilman Ash Kalra had been arrested and charged with a DUI early Saturday morning, Kalra and his chief of staff, Joseph Okpaku, were already in damage-control mode. They beat the CHiPs to the punch by holding a casual press conference at Kalra’s home.

A protocol put together a few weeks ago by deputy DA Jim Sibley tried to clarify his office’s stance on medical marijuana with a simple explanation: Collectives are legal under California law if they are clearly nonprofit and follow land-use codes. That didn’t stop Police Chief Chris Moore from telling the San Jose City Council that he’d heard directly from the DA’s office that not one of the 100-plus dispensaries in San Jose is legal.

In another example that this truly is the city of “Man Jose,” three of the four offspring of San Jose City Hall’s celebrity falcons, Clara and Esteban Colbert, were found to be male while being banded this morning. Glenn Stewart, coordinator of UC Santa Cruz’s Predatory Bird Research Group, rappelled down the side of the building and banded the chicks’ legs so that scientists can track them and collect data. He said all four chicks appear to be healthy and “look great.”

The falcon chicks were born earlier this month on a City Hall ledge 18 stories above the street.

Emmett Carson, CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, says it is “hard to understand” why the San Jose City Council chose to delay action on accepting a $50,000 grant to look into anti-predatory lending policies, what with so many people falling deeper into debt. He should ask Manny Diaz, a former city councilmember and state assemblymember who is now a registered lobbyist for Community Financial Services Association of America, a trade group that represents the payday loan industry

San Jose city councilmembers hope to be able to count the number of marijuana dispensaries on their fingers. The compromise measure authored by Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen and approved Tuesday by a split council hopes to reduce the number of city collectives, which currently number more than 100, to no more than 10

The San Jose City Council once again fell short on Tuesday in its efforts to craft a plan to deal with the popularity of medical marijuana clubs in the city. Many of the ideas being proffered by city staff, Mayor Chuck Reed and councilmembers Rose Herrera, Sam Liccardo and Pete Constant, were wildly ambitious, including things that no other municipality has tried in the 14 years since the passage of Prop 215.

Updated with correction: Apr. 14.

The civil case against former DeAnza baseball players for a 2007 group sex incident appears to be unraveling. Of the nine original defendants, only two defendants are left and one intends to fight back in court regardless of whether or not he is exonerated in the case. San Jose attorney Bruce Funk, who represents defendant Kenneth Chadwick, would not confirm or deny if the plaintiff’s attorneys have attempted to settle out of court, though we hear that an offer was made and rejected. But Funk did say “we will go back after that plaintiff’s attorneys for financial compensation.”

Last week, Pat Dando, who announced back in December that she would be leaving her post as Chamber CEO at the end of this month, decided to extend her stay in office. Her stated reason is that she wants to give the Chamber search committee more time to find the perfect candidate. What’s more likely is that she’s keeping the seat warm for Pete Constant.

San Jose’s biggest nightclub, Wet, is officially washed up. Caught up in the city’s clampdown on clubs following several incidents, owner Mike Hamod handed over the keys to the former Studio Theater at 396 S. First St. on Saturday.

Instead of going back to the bargaining table following Mayor Chuck Reed’s State of the City address last week, some San Jose police officers started looking for a one-way ticket out of town. 

David Satterfield doesn’t claim to be Don Draper, but you’d be a mad man to think the former Mercury News managing editor didn’t help soften the paper’s stance toward Team San Jose. Just a week after Team San Jose signed with Satterfield’s public relations firm, Sitrick and Company, Satterfield put together a meeting between the financially delinquent venue operators and the Merc’s editorial board.

Some meetings have too much at stake to leave to Skype, which is why Mayor Chuck Reed and a small convoy of local officials took a four-day jaunt to Japan last week.

A couple of days before Debra Figone finalized her selection of Chris Moore as the city’s next chief of police, councilman Sam Liccardo referred to the candidates’ race as “the elephant in the room”—Moore, acting chief for the last three months, is white while the other finalist, Oakland Chief of Police Anthony Batts, is black. The real “elephant in the room,” though, was an inflammatory online report by a small newspaper in Long Beach.

As young staffers for various South Bay Labor Council-backed candidates and office-holders, Rolando Bonilla and Ryan Ford learned a little bit about winning ugly. Recently, they also learned a bit about losing—and they just received another painful lesson.