The people in charge of providing financial and protective services for Santa Clara County residents run a department lacking structure and accountability, according to a just-released Civil Grand Jury audit that goes before the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. Other items on the board agenda include grand jury reviews for health inspections of food trucks and farmers markets, and a review of Juvenile Hall.

In 1988, while working for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in Minneapolis—he was stumping for Hubert “Skip” Humphrey for the U.S. Senate—a revelation occurred out of the public sphere. As a witness to the event, it resonates today in the era of partisanship. It was an example of how politics really work when not viewed solely through the jaded lens of the media.

Breaking up is hard to do. Breaking up a fight between the San Jose police union and City Hall could be damn near impossible. In what appeared to be an effort to mend fences and remind people who’s the boss, Acting Police Chief Larry Esquivel recently sent an email this week to his command staff—roughly 50 deputy police chiefs, lieutenants and captains—scolding them for signing on to a letter critical of the city recent actions involving labor negotiations.

Ticked off that Santa Clara County refused to continue labor negotiations over the weekend and still demands forced overtime to patch up staffing shortages, the county’s largest union sounds like it’s ready to strike. SEIU 521 will hold a noon press conference to announce the decision, where it is expected to demand benefits that would make it easier to recruit and retain qualified workers.

Starting in September, as a result of federal budget sequestration earlier this year, rent will rise significantly for Santa Clara County’s Section 8 tenants, close to 60 percent of whom are elderly or disabled.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen has been touting his swollen campaign piggy bank to the press as a warning to potential challengers in 2014, and a re-election fundraiser hosted by beer distributor and philanthropist Mike Fox Sr. earlier this month, which included former San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore among guests, only added to the $131,000-plus Rosen raised in the first six months of this year. But word is the DA’s already strong chances of staying in office will get the kind of Series-A funding startups love. A group of Sand Hill tech investors are in the process of forming an independent expenditure (IE) committee to support Rosen, and they’ve approached Democratic operative Jude Barry to manage it.

The concept of stewardship is one that has become much more prominent in our environmental discussions in recent years, especially as it pertains to our parks, trails and urban open spaces. Webster defines stewardship as: the conducting, supervising, or managing of something; especially: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.

Developers will break ground Wednesday on a Whole Foods Market on The Alameda, one that comes with a rooftop microbrewery.

Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen and Councilmember Don Rocha want the city to offer some measure of paid parental leave to make it more enticing for new hires and more accommodating of existing workers. That and other items will be discussed at Wednesday’s Rules and Open Government Committee.

A little more than a week ago my wife and I attended Outside Lands, the three-day concert at Golden Gate Park headlined by Sir Paul McCartney. Even though we were at the upper age bracket of those assembled, we felt no discrimination. The 65,000 attendees each day were exceedingly respectful and well-behaved. Like Outside Lands does for music, I thought, Silicon Valley’s diverse voices come together on common goals relating to education.

Once a beacon of America’s promise, the city of Detroit is burning out. And if San Jose refuses to innovate in ways Detroit could have, it might face a similar future. To understand how, we must first uncover overlooked similarities between San Jose’s present and Detroit’s past.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed worries about the unlimited spending by independent expenditure committees during elections, saying it gives outside interests more sway than individual candidates. At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Reed and his colleagues will consider a motion to lift voluntary spending limits on candidates to even the playing field with committees during campaigns. Other tiems on the agenda include updates on contracts related to the Environmental Innovation Center and the San Jose/Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility.

News slows down in the summertime, so San Jose Inside columnist Rich Robinson takes note of some of the bigger and more under the radar stories of August.

My journey through the new paradigm of San Jose’s parks and trails received another boost in the last month. Part of it came from a vacation to Montana, which always opens my eyes a bit and makes me reflect. But the biggest boost I received was from a tour of Los Angeles and Orange County parks.

Big-time Bay Area developers Tom Armstrong and Chop Keenan have joined forces with former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery to push the city to change its zoning classification of a piece of property on South King Road. The land is currently home to Asian/Indian radio station KLOK 1170 and a sprawling field that would be better off as a massive lot of single-family detached homes, according to the power brokers. But in an effort to create jobs, the city’s general plan forbids the conversion of light industrial property to residential, and current Mayor Chuck Reed and city planning director Joseph Horwedel are trying to quash the proposal. That might not make a difference, though, as some men can’t be denied.

The nation spends more than $60 billion a year to keep more than 2.5 million people incarcerated. If we continue to spend our money on locking people up instead of investing in early childhood education, nothing will change.