Within of receiving 17 boxes of signed petitions, the San Jose City Clerk’s office determined that enough signatures were collected to temporarily suspend a new medical marijuana ordinance. Citizens Coalition for Patient Care (CCPC) ran the petition drive, and the County Registrar of Voters (ROV) now has between 30 and 60 business days to perform a random signature-verification check.

I have been working most of my adult life to reduce the number of kids locked up in jails. It has been an uphill battle in most communities, especially in the last decade when we have passed legislation allowing juveniles to be tried as adults. A new report is out by the reputable Annie E. Casey Foundation that supports my belief that juvenile hall is not rehabilitative and is ineffective in preventing future criminal behavior.

Steve Kline—a lawyer, former political consultant and current city activist—recently sent a letter to the San Jose City Council asking for a full hearing on the land option agreement with Lew Wolff that gives the A’s owner a sweet deal for a future ballpark. It was a shot over the bow, not a lethal attempt to kill the stadium.

A political comic strip/hit-piece lampooning Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong was sent to 7,200 Cupertino voters over the weekend, just two days before the city’s election on Tuesday. Titled “The Adventures of Gilbert Wrong, Mayor of Cupertino,” the comic strip sets out four different scenarios in which Wong is contacted by a secretary with someone waiting to bend the mayor’s ear. Nonetheless, Wong was able to be re-elected as mayor.

Due to the recent sexual harassment stories surfacing about Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, it was interesting to note that a new study surfaced Monday about school-age sexual harassment. The American Association of University Women released a major national study on 7-12th grade sexual harassment. Over nearly 2000 boys and girls from public and private schools were surveyed online in May and June 2011 on whether they had experienced sexual harassment. The AAUW findings indicate that during the 2010-11 school year 48 percent of students in grades 7-12 experienced some form of sexual harassment in person, electronically via texting (some refer to it as sexting), email and/or social media.

There are some topics that are difficult to talk candidly about, let along think about, among our family and friends. One of them is discussing our eventual death and the specifics that accompany end of life. Issues like a will, trust, medical power of attorney and funeral preparations are sensitive things to prepare for but prudent to do while we are still of sound mind and body. The above discussion relates to the new General Plan adopted by the City Council last week.

The City Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday to decide whether or not it should sell land to owners of the Oakland A’s. The plan is to sell the property for $6.975,227, which is 36.5 percent of the total ballpark site’s current value. The theory, according to ballpark advocates, is the economic benefit of a ballpark would outweigh some combination of corporate, retail offices and housing.

Faced with what they called a back-door ban of San Jose’s collectives, the barely month-old Citizens Coalition for Patient Care (CCPC) turned in more than 47,000 signatures to the city clerk last week, well over the 29,653 signatures needed for a referendum against regulations the City Council passed in September. James Anthony, CCPC chairman, said the organization also registered nearly 8,000 new voters and raised over $200,000 from supporters. The group may need both on their side, as Mayor Chuck Reed proposed raising the Measure U tax on collectives from 7 to 10 percent to cover potential election costs for the referendum.

After a day-long “general strike” in Oakland, which lasted well into early Thursday morning, Occupy Oakland protestors have removed barricades at the port of Oakland entrance. On Wednesday afternoon, a crowd of more than 3,000 people marched to the port of Oakland.

The media loves big numbers. Headlines reading “California High Speed Rail to Cost $98.5 Billion” are intended to startle the uniformed and easily misled. A look into the numbers and the plan reveals a well-thought out strategy to provide 21st-century transportation to our state.

The whole world is keeping tabs on anti-Wall Street protests. On Saturday, the San Francisco occupation marched against police brutality. Four days prior, police arrested more than 100 people in Oakland for camping at City Hall. The militant response by police to protesters angered many, and the iconic takeaway was pictures and video of protester and Iraqi war veteran Scott Olsen lying bloody and dazed, his skull fractured by a tear-gas canister fired by police. This all happened after San Jose police raided the camp at San Jose’s City Hall plaza on Sunday, Oct. 23, arresting eight occupiers. In response, Shaun O’Kelly climbed atop the plaza structure in the dark of night. He now camps on a 5-foot-wide ledge.

Four San Jose councilmembers want City Manager Debra Figone to explain how she hires and ensures diveristy in senior staff positions. Few outside searches take place for qualified candidates, and just as few minorities currently hold director-level positions. As a result, Councilmembers Kansen Chu, Ash Kalra, Nancy Pyle, Xavier Campos and Don Rocha sent a memo to the city’s Open Rules and Government Committee asking for data. They also want a discussion on hiring practices to take place at the council level.

Over the last several months I have written two San Jose Inside columns on the Gates Foundation initiative to fund city/district/charter school collaborative compacts that bring meaningful cooperation and planning to the forefront of communities. Each time, I wrote that I had enormous hope that our collaborative compacts would be validated and funded by Gates. That hope, however, took a hit during a conference call with the foundation Monday.

Tomorrow, the City Council will adopt the 2040 General Plan (GP2040), which charts the growth of San Jose for the next 30 years. The Task Force, of which I am a member, met for over four years and held over 60 public meetings. In hindsight, the GP2040 could have been done sooner, however, the scope was too broad at the start and it should have been focused solely on land use.

San Jose’s roads are the worst in the county and among the bottom third for cities in the Bay Area. And it appears they’re only going to get worse. A report given to the City Council from Transportation Director Hans Larsen says San Jose is currently able to fund just 15 percent of the nearly billion dollars it will take to maintain roads over the next decade. That will result in an $860 million backlog.

San Jose cannabis activists hoping to repeal the city’s new dispensary regulations say they have almost 50,000 petition signatures before today’s deadline. The Citizens Coalition for Patient Care, a group running the petition drive, calls the City Council’s ordinance “unworkable.” The group says it needs 29,653 valid signatures to qualify for a referendum to overturn San Jose’s ordinance.