San Jose Inside

An ordinance banning cannabis collectives from unincorporated Santa Clara County goes into effect Sept. 25.

Santa Clara County's Office of Human Relations is inviting public testimony about the cost of living in Silicon Valley.

Code for San Jose—a collective of civic-minded programmers—has set out to take mountains of inchoate public data and form meaningful projects.

Back in 1999, the San Jose Police Department led the charge in collecting racial data about the people it stops and arrests. But it's been five years since the the agency has analyzed any of that information.

Congressman Mike Honda is no stranger to falling asleep in meetings and missing votes. But it appears that absenteeism has carried over to his re-election campaign.

A handful of city leaders want to hike up penalties for illegal fireworks, given that complaints and injuries are becoming increasingly common. Also on Wednesday's Rules Committee agenda, the city's federal lobbyists will submit a mid-year report. San Jose Inside will be meeting with the lobbyists Thursday morning, and readers are invited to submit questions in the comments section.

I recently had the good fortune to observe a conference on collaborative international partnerships for higher education in Afghanistan. The restoration of higher education is key to rebuilding the war-ravaged nation.

San Jose Water Company proposed in 2012 to increase water rates nearly 40 percent over three years. A report on the proposed rate increase shows that, to a large degree, the project is tied to a a worthwhile expansion of our water recycling infrastructure.

An old yellow cottage in Delmas Park has become a point of contention in a heated debate about the future of downtown San Jose. That and more will be discussed at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

San Jose Inside editor Josh Koehn sat down for a interview last week with San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. In the first part of their conversation, the two discuss the city's controversial pension reforms, the depleted police ranks, the current mayor's race, San Jose's lawsuit with Major League Baseball and Reed's insistence that he's not a closet Republican.

It's a common practice to use old, gutted patrol cars as mechanical scarecrows, according to San Jose Police Department spokesman Officer Albert Morales. But police are pretty miffed that they weren't notified about a plan to park a defunct cruiser near the San Jose Repertory Theater for about a week.

Twenty-nine baby chicks are currently nestled in the soil tunnels of northern San Jose, according to city officials. It’s a record rebound for the western burrowing owls, a California Bird Species of Special Concern.

Dave Cortese's campaign for mayor of San Jose suffered its first major setbacks this past week, and the Santa Clara County supervisor would prefer if we don’t talk about it. So, let’s talk about it.

Ernie Konnyu has been on a terrifying roll when it comes to making the people he likes look bad. On Friday, Konnyu attacked the Chamber PAC and Jim Cunneen for supporting State Assembly candidate Evan Low—mainly because Low is gay and Konnyu believes gay blood kills people.

City leaders are demanding a public hearing on airport security after two widely publicized security breaches called into question the safety of the San Jose airport.