With the passage of Senate Bill 654 (SB654), authored by Senate President Pro tem Darrell Steinberg, cities in California would retain Redevelopment Agency’s (RDA) tax increment financing to build more affordable housing. The entire Legislature is set to vote on the bill.

San Jose’s City Council will return to session Tuesday and discuss banning polystyrene food containers in the future, development of the west side of San Jose’s airport, construction of a new street for the BART line coming to Berryessa and terminating the mayor and council’s CalPERS contract.

San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore insists he has no plans to retire. To prove the point, Moore supplied San Jose Inside with the total number of sick leave hours he has accumulated during his career with SJPD. According to Moore, the total as of Wednesday is 1,752.4 hours. The chief estimates that if he were to retire, the city would have to buy out his sick leave at a cost of $165,000-170,000, or “somewhere in that ballpark.”

Last week I attended a disturbing meeting. Not a City Council meeting or a committee meeting but rather a meeting with law enforcement on child pornography. I did not know what to expect. The Silicon Valley Internet Crimes Against Children (SVICAC) is responsible for investigating cases of web-facilitated child pornography and cases of child sexual exploitation or abuse that results from contact over the Internet. There is a small team that works in this capacity that presented at the meeting. A San Jose Police Department officer gave a very informative presentation, and the seriousness of the content was striking.

Some residents in San Jose were surprised to receive a holiday card last month from Steve Kline, who is running for a City Council seat in District 6 against incumbent Pierluigi Oliverio. Kline says the card was nothing more than him and his husband wishing a happy holidays to a few of their close friends and neighbors. How many friends and neighbors? Oh, Kline’s ballpark figure is about ... 1,000.

Kansen Chu had a productive holiday season, mainly, the council member says, because he didn’t take a vacation. Fundraising for the District 4 City Council race later this year, Chu says he raised $45,000 for his campaign in the final two weeks of the year.

As you may have heard, last month the California Supreme Court terminated all Redevelopment Agencies (RDA) in California. As a result, they will be dissolved by Feb. 1, 2012. The first step is for each RDA to form a “Successor Agency.” This agency will enforce any and all obligations and agreements that are currently in place.

Councilmember Pete Constant is leading the charge to terminate the CalPERS pension program for the mayor and City Council. Originally asking City Attorney Rich Doyle to study the proposal in June, Constant’s Dec. 19 memo, which suggests Doyle draft a resolution that gives notice of the city’s intention to terminate its contract with CalPERS, went in front the Rules and Open Govt. Committee on Wednesday and was unanimously approved.

A day before New Year’s Eve, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters validated the necessary amount of signatures for a referendum to go forward on the City Council’s medical marijuana ordinance. While some city officials were offering tough talk in the final months of the year, statements by Mayor Chuck Reed on Tuesday seem to suggest a softened stance that would allow for a compromise rather than the referendum going to voters.

Voters approved Measure O in 2002 to bolster public safety throughout San Jose, and the city started issuing $159 million in bonds. Much of the money was intended for constructing the south San Jose police substation on Great Oaks Boulevard. Nearly 10 years later, those ambitious days seem like a distant memory. The 107,000-square-foot facility—officially completed at the end of 2010 at a cost of $90.8 million—is currently one of five publicly funded buildings in the last 15 months that have yet to open or were closed the same day they were completed.

Iowa just held its Republican Primary to ring in the New Year, which means two things: It’s officially election season from now through Nov. 6, and the opinions of Iowans no longer matter. Much was made about the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which, according to the court’s interpretation of the First Amendment, means the government can’t limit spending on elections by companies and nonprofits. A battle is now being fought at the local level in Milpitas, where community activist Ed Riffle is challenging the constitutionality of a new ordinance passed by the City Council that limits campaign contributions to $500 per election.

Due to flat tax revenues and escalating pension costs, the city of San Jose has been forced to cut library hours year after year as well as make million dollar sacrifices in all other city departments. Even with all of the eliminations, San Jose continues to have a budget deficit. We need to re-examine the current delivery model for San Jose libraries and seriously consider how we can incorporate volunteers to fully maximize the hours of operation at all of our libraries.

As the year winds down, you can almost hear the collective sigh coming from City Hall. Or maybe that’s an echoing whoosh from councilmembers, the mayor, city manager and their staffs, who hightailed it for the holidays. Either way, 2011 was a tumultuous year, fierce in the manner civic actors clashed over pension reform, public safety, pot, a potential ballpark, ballot measures, pay cuts, occupations of city property and other issues of varying degrees of importance.

A ruling Thursday by the California Supreme Court is more or less the nail in the coffin for the San Jose Redevelopment Agency. It’s also a critical victory for Gov. Jerry Brown, whose budget has been under scrutiny for major shortfalls compared to rosy projections regarding revenue. The state’s high court decided $1.7 billion can be legally taken from RDAs across the state, and the ruling also denies agencies the ability to “pay to play” by giving money over to the state to remain in existence.

Contrary to rumors circulating at City Hall, Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen says she did not tell police officer Tam Truong to run for a District 4 City Council seat against Kansen Chu next fall. Instead, Nguyen says she was introduced to the Dick-Tracy-turned-political-candidate through a friend of a friend. (Isn’t that what Facebook is for?)

Last week, the City Council made a change to suspend two construction taxes for a limited time in an attempt to encourage commercial property owners to provide improvements for their existing buildings. The hope is that if owners can improve their buildings at a lower cost, they may find tenants—which is a win for them and for San Jose.