Neil Struthers is out as CEO of the powerful Santa Clara & San Benito Counties Building & Construction Trades Council, a source tells San Jose Inside. The circumstances of his departure from the labor organization are unclear. The Building and Trades Council oversees the training and representation of 23 craft unions and more than 30,000 construction industry workers employed in Silicon Valley, according to the organization’s website.

For nearly two months, San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos has repeatedly refused to talk with Metro/San Jose Inside about fictitious business filings he and incarcerated former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. initiated for their past political campaigns. The business filings had identical names to their political committees. An experienced political consultant described the filings as “somewhere between suspicious and corrupt,” as they could have been used to cloak a duplicate, secret bank account. On Thursday, however, Campos finally addressed the unusual fictitious business filings, when Metro/San Jose Inside sent reporter Stephen Layton to the councilman’s public office hours at Mayfair Community Center. Registered for the event under his own name as a San Jose resident concerned about crime, Layton recorded the brief conversation, which took place in a public facility, with Campos and the councilman’s chief of staff, Nicole Willett.

A video campaign launched by the San Jose Police Department and the Office of the Independent Police Auditor aims to solicit tips from the public to solve homicide cases that have gone cold. “Make the Call, San Jose” airs on CreaTV and is funded by the SJPD.

The Democratic Central Committee voted last week to speed up its endorsement process, giving the group two more months to rally behind its chosen San Jose mayoral candidate (hint: Dave Cortese). As a result, some candidates who would be up for consideration—but unlikely to win the endorsement—are now saying they didn’t want the committee’s backing in the first place.

It’s sad to see some of the data on how poor and minority children perform in school in San Jose and the greater Silicon Valley, says Santa Clara County Board of Education Trustee Joseph DiSalvo. The results of longitudinal student test data have long indicated a sizeable achievement gap—a gap that threatens our region’s long-term economic viability. We can and must do better, especially in a district like Morgan Hill Unified.

San Jose will start looking for ways to pay for body-worn cameras on police officers, which Independent Police Auditor LaDoris Cordell says will lessen citizen complaints and keep officers accountable for the way they conduct themselves in the field. That and more at this week’s Rules and Open Government Committee meeting.

Pete Constant, the lone Republican contender in this year’s crowded field for mayor of San Jose, bowed out of the race Tuesday. His exit drops the number of San Jose councilmembers running to succeed Mayor Chuck Reed to four: Rose Herrera, Sam Liccardo, Madison Nguyen and Pierluigi Oliverio. County Supervisor Dave Cortese, who previously served on the council, is also considered a strong contender.

Last month, Fly broke the Earth-shattering news that county supervisor and San Jose mayoral contender Dave Cortese isn’t too fond of Walmart. He refused to mention the store by name in an invite to his campaign kickoff, instead noting that the party was near a “Big Box” store. Crazy, we know. But just when the Internet was nearing recovery, a couple of mayors decided to reignite the fight.

A group of dispensary owners filed an initiative to bring a full set of marijuana regulations to San Jose voters this fall. The “Medical Marijuana Regulation for San Jose Act of 2014” aims to set a minimum of 50 pot clubs. It also asks the city to form a cannabis commission similar to the advisory boards it has for libraries and parks, land use and transportation, among other interests.

With the rental market heating up, more people are asking for the city’s help to mediate lease rate hikes. The City Council on Tuesday will decide whether to pay more for a program to mediate and arbitrate cases between landlords trying to keep up with the market and tenants getting priced out of their homes. Other items on the agenda include a code enforcement audit, a historical landmark designation for a fruit stand and a trash-reduction plan.

While San Jose considers where to build a bond measure-funded softball complex, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors will discuss a plan to bring it rent-free to the fairgrounds. Also on the agenda: a discussion about contraband being smuggled in with jail laundry, Section 8 housing help and a work-study program for college students.

In a near-unanimous vote Thursday, the county’s Democratic Central Committee agreed to move its endorsement decision for the San Jose mayor’s race from April to February. Moving the schedule up a couple months gives the party more time to mobilize a campaign behind its preferred candidate, who many presume to be county Supervisor Dave Cortese.

The public has a short memory regarding scandals, but there are three transgressions voters will never forgive. One of them is intentionally increasing traffic.

The county’s Democratic Central Committee will vote Thursday night on whether to advance its endorsement process by a month, and the result could have a dramatic impact on the San Jose mayor’s race.

An initiative to reverse a San Jose-wide ban on polystyrene food take-out containers failed after election officials found that more than half the signatures endorsing the measure were made-up or otherwise unusable.

While families bit into churros and navigated the winter carnival that is downtown San Jose during the holidays, the season of giving became a little less magnanimous around Christmas in the Park. And no, we’re not talking about the shooting. Ryan Sebastian, the entrepreneur behind Moveable Feast, approached organizers months ago about providing some food options for the December event. They—well, specifically Christmas in the Park director Jason Minsky—apparently blew him off.