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.

Chuck Reed could be the first San Jose mayor in two decades to face a serious reelection challenge if Assemblyman Joe Coto decides to run for the city’s top post. Team Coto has been putting out feelers to see if there’s enough interest in their man, who will be termed out of representing the 23rd Assembly District in 2010. Officially, Coto’s not interested in taking on Reed. He established an officeholder account in November for a state Senate run. Question is, would genial Joe undertake a bruising battle to shorten his commute?

If city council staffers can’t bring Playboy to their offices in City Hall, then firefighters shouldn’t be able to browse pornographic magazines while on duty at the firehouse. That seems to be the reasoning behind Fire Chief Darryl Von Raesfeld’s recent decision to ban porn from the city’s fire stations, which tend to become a second home for firefighters who work 24-hour-plus shifts.

The Recall Madison folks, in a remarkable display of nerve, today asked Councilwoman Madison Nguyen to sign onto their petition asking the City Council to appoint someone to her seat if she is recalled on March 3. That’s right, the group of 50 or so mostly Vietnamese-American protesters, along with former County Supervisor Pete McHugh, were back at their familiar post outside City Hall at noon.

Some local Vietnamese folks are already lobbying San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to bypass a special election, and appoint someone to fill Councilmember Madison Nguyen‘s seat, should she be recalled on March 3. Barry Hung Do, an anti-Nguyen community activist, says he met with Reed back in December hoping to talk him into appointing someone to the embattled councilmember’s seat rather than spending money on a special election. 

The still-slumping economy appears to be giving Dean Singleton a free pass to continue slicing away at his newspapers. As if employees in his already decimeted newsrooms aren’t scraping by as is, Singleton’s MediaNews is now requiring all of its non-union workers to take a one-week furlough starting this month.

When the Merc, KCBS and the Business Journal reported yesterday that Tesla had shifted gears and reversed direction, and might not be building a plant in San Jose after all, it was old news to readers of Watch Dog Silicon Valley.

Poor San Jose doesn’t know if should do a few extra crunches or just give up and have another Twinkie. A recent Men’s Fitness article listed San Jose as one of America’s fattest cities ... 15th fattest city in the nation. But then Women’s Health ranked San Jose number one for health and number two for fitness. And wait. Just last month, Men’s Health ranked us sixth best city in the United States—first for health and fourth for fitness.

San Jose city officials, facing a $65 million shortfall, are penny-pinching everywhere they can. Or are they? Yesterday, the council signed off on cutting 52 positions. Another 18 employees could lose their jobs in March. Meanwhile, Councilwoman Nancy Pyle shelled out more than $6,000 to buy new furniture for her city hall office.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” a father tells his son while standing outside the cyclone fences being erected for the inaugural. He was, of course, talking about tickets. And if you know a congressperson, you had a chance of getting the Ticket of the Century.