The downsizing continues at Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, as the company confirms it is laying off four people this week. Executive Editor Dale Bryant chalked the move up to the economy, saying SVCN is cutting back for the same reason everyone in the industry is laying off people.

Some members of the San Jose Elections Commission are implying that Councilmember Nora Campos had something to do with the anonymous complaint field against Tom McEnery, which was brushed aside Friday after months of huffing and puffing by Campos and her allies. And staffers in Campos’s office are shocked. (Shocked!)

Even Mayor Chuck Reed himself seems to believe he might have miscalculated community concerns in San Jose’s most recent controversy—the selection of the newly hired, just-resigned Independent Police Auditor.

Over the weekend, Reed finally confessed that maybe he was wrong about hiring Chris Constantin as the new IPA, knowing full well that his older brother is a San Jose homicide detective. “I didn’t think it was a fatal flaw,” Reed told Fly, adding that he is surprised it turned into such a big deal. “After the public controversy exploded, it was fairly clear that it was [a mistake].”

UPDATED at 6pm.
Councilwoman Nora Campos fired off a letter to Mayor Chuck Reed this morning blaming him for furthering the distrust between the community and the San Jose Police Department. Campos points out that the mayor never disclosed the fact that Chris Constantin, the newly appointed Independent Police Auditor, has a brother who is a homicide detective in the police department.

It seems that Pam Foley doesn’t have to try to hard to get her name out there as a candidate for San Jose City Council. Even though the San Jose Unified school trustee has no history at City Hall, she seems to be getting attention from San Jose’s political insiders.

The folks at Psycho Donuts in downtown Campbell have pretty good imaginations—their signature comestible is a donut topped with pretzels, chocolate, marshmallow and chili powder (tastes better than it sounds). But there’s no way they could have dreamed this up.

The jockeying has started early for the termed-out District 1 supervisor’s seat held by Don Gage, which will be on the ballot in June 2010, still more than a year away. Former San Jose City Councilmember Forrest Williams has been telling anyone who will listen that he’s running for the seat, and water district board member Rosemary Kamei has been mentioned as another possible candidate. One interesting entrant would be Teresa Alvarado, daughter of ex-Supervisor Blanca Alvarado, who’s been telling friends she’s serious about taking a run at it. The race could become even more interesting if Republican Pat Dando, a former San Jose city councilmember and mayoral candidate who currently runs the Chamber of Commerce, dives in

The Mercury News devoted the majority of its front page today to an in-depth look at the hormonal changes that occur in adolescents. Under the large, all caps headline “PUBERTY,” Silicon Valley’s only daily newspaper, winner of several Pulitzer prizes under its previous ownership, breathlessly revealed that humans between the ages of 10 and 16 begin paying attention to members of the opposite sex — and leave clothes on the floors of their rooms.

Apparently San Jose State University is quite the party school. Except it’s not the students who are having all the fun. On March 5, around noon, police were called to room 229 of Clark Hall, where Food Culture was being taught. According to Detective Mike Santos, the officers on the scene found the instructor Eileen Trans, whom they say was a tad bit intoxicated. “She walked in and she had fallen and hit her head on the whiteboard and then she just started acting really weird,” said Dan Lu, a student in the class. Though she was not arrested or cited, the officers had someone come pick her up, and told the class it was canceled for the day. The following week a new teacher was filling in for Trans.

When Mayor Chuck Reed and his City Council allies created the Public Intoxication Task Force back in October, they put its members on a tight leash. The Task Force, created in response to community members outraged over the large number of Latinos arrested for being drunk in public, predictably demanded full access to arrest reports, as well as a greater scope and extended timeline so they could get down to the bottom of this issue. Members of the group soon began to feel stonewalled by city leaders—and let them know it.

It seems somewhat odd that Jim Cogan would sign on to a campaign opposing porn filtering in the city’s libraries, considering the fact that Councilman ‘Porno Pete’ Constant is the one spearheading the move for just such porn filtering. Cogan, who is Constant’s chief of staff and is planning to run for city council in 2010, was one of 150 members who signed on to the “Books Not Filters” Facebook page, a letter-writing campaign to oppose Internet filtering in the libraries.

Fly reported three weeks ago that the South Bay Labor Council’s generalissima, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, seemed to be fading from the City Hall scene, while former vice mayor Cindy Chavez looked to be stepping into her shoes. This provoked an uproar from the local chattering class, who immediately attacked Fly for being off the mark. Apparently they were wrong.

Let’s hope Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) has reconnected with some old high school friends on Facebook. They might be the only people who will talk to him anymore. Two weeks ago the state senator, whose district runs from Santa Barbara County to the Almaden Valley and Los Gatos, alienated pretty much everybody on both sides of the aisle by refusing to vote for the state budget until he’d extracted a concession on open primaries.

Lately the City of San Jose’s Falcon Cam is a bust. There’s no sign of Clara and Carlos, the peregrine falcons that have been nesting on the 18th floor of City Hall.  With the nesting box empty, Fly headed over to Guadalupe River Park & Gardens last Saturday and joined twenty birders for an early morning bird walk. The Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society’s Janna Pauser, noting that migrating birds use the river for a flyway,  found us a red tailed hawk, hooded mergansers, black phoebes, yellow rumped warblers, flickers and finches galore, as well as a rare raptor known as a merlin, falco columbarius. Missing were the homeless sedentarius, a species that often can be found encamped on this three-mile ribbon of green running from downtown San Jose to Alviso.  None were seen because of the San Jose Police Department and Santa Clara Valley Water Districts’ Feb. 26 sweep.

The last we heard from Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, executive director of the South Bay Labor Council and Working Partnerships, she was on her way to Washington, D.C., to assist President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. That’s when former SJ vice-mayor (and failed mayoral candidate) Cindy Chavez resurfaced in the political scene, stepping up to represent the labor camp on the 18th Floor of City Hall—as a temporary contractor. But Ellis-Lamkins has been virtually absent at City Hall since then, which has raised the questions of whether she is stepping down for good—or already has.

After introducing Gavin Newsom to an adoring crowd last night, Chuck Reed split early. He had a date in DC, where he will join Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaragosa and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders in an effort to bring some federal money to California. Newsom skipped the trip, choosing to raise some campaign money for his gubernatorial bid while his colleagues are doing the state’s business.