Mayor Chuck Reed sat down with the Wall Street Journal for a Q&A article published today, and the responses were strikingly similar to the State of the City Address he delivered last Thursday.

Most of Mayor Chuck Reed’s State of the City Address, delivered at the Civic Center this evening, dealt—in sometimes painful detail—with the budget mess that the mayor has been forced to deal with since he took office.

He began by defending the city’s Redevelopment Agency, which, like RDA’s throughout the state, is under attack from Sacramento.

Last week, RDA director Harry Mavrogenes and the San Jose City Council said they would work to keep the Redevelopment Agency going despite Gov. Jerry Brown’s intention to shut down agencies statewide.

An article in the Mercury News closed with the following paragraph: “The governor’s finance office said Brown has not wavered on his position and cited a study released Tuesday by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. The report offers support for Brown’s plan to eliminate the agencies and replace them with other ‘tools to finance economic development.’”

In my opinion, the Council made two great investments two weeks ago for our tax base and jobs. The Council provided $500,000 of Redevelopment Agency (RDA) funds each to Sunpower and Maxim, totaling a one million dollar investment for economic development. These two companies compete globally, therefore they could have chosen any other location in the world. 

With word that Chris Moore will shed the interim tag to become the permanent chief of police in San Jose—he was reportedly selected by City Manager Debra Figone over Oakland chief Anthony Batts—reactions are as varied as they are passionate.

The city stopped accepting tax applications from medical marijuana businesses last month, and a memo from the city’s finance director indicates there were slightly more than expected.

The two biggest issues facing San Jose so far this year—pension reform and the future of redevelopment—will be discussed at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, and the public forum concluding the session is likely to get lively.

It looks to be a two-man race in determining who will be the next chief of police in San Jose. Reports state City Manager Debra Figone will make her decision by early February, and the final candidates appear to be acting police chief Christopher Moore and Oakland’s current chief of police, Anthony Batts.

The City of San Jose has adopted Civil Service Rules that state what is and what is not allowed in regards to employment. The City Charter allows for changes to Civil Service Rules by a Council vote, and does not necessarily require a city-wide election.

More than a year ago, the San Jose City Council was presented with renewing its Microsoft desktop licenses. This can be an expensive line item. We have spent over seven figures in the past for licensing alone on this item.  I thought to myself, and later spoke at the Council meeting, that there is no real competition for this purchase we were about to approve and wondered if we could do better. In the end, we got a government discount from a Microsoft reseller, but it was not truly competitive since Microsoft did not have any competition at City Hall.

At its meeting yesterday, the San Jose City Council passed the most stringent ban on plastic bags in the Bay Area. Stores will no longer be allowed to hand out plastic bags in 2012, with the exception of restaurants and second hand shops. With this ban, San Jose will be following the lead of ten other cities in California, including Palo Alto, Oakland and San Francisco.

It was a tough week, image-wise, for the City of San Jose. The nation’s seventh-smartest city looked pretty stupid thanks to two stories that received a fair amount of press attention.

City Councilwoman Rose Herrera didn’t mince her words. “If we were the private sector we would be asking for resignations,” she said about Team San Jose, which runs the McEnery Convention Center and Visitors Bureau.

Councilman Sam Liccardo reported that when compared with six other similar-sized California cities, San Jose comes in dead last in the number of conventions booked. Meanwhile, special events like the Genghis Khan exhibition not only end up losing money—they have to be bailed out by the city. Yet shortly after CEO Dan Fenton informed the city that Team San Jose was $950,000 over budget, he went and gave bonuses to himself and his staff

It is that time of year again, with lobbyists circling City Hall in preparation for the General Plan hearings.

With the leadership of Mayor Reed, modifications to our General Plan (GP) have been reduced to once a year, for the most part. At the GP hearings, applicants make their case as to why current land-use designations should be changed to allow for the applicant to build what they want, regardless of how the land is currently zoned.

Pat Dando announced that she will be leaving the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce after a six-year stint as head of the local group. “It’s time for a new chapter for me, personally and professionally,” she explained. She added that she wanted to wait until the elections were over before announcing her decision.

Mayor Chuck Reed has nominated Madison Nguyen to be vice mayor, three weeks after she won a surprisingly close race to hold onto her District 7 council seat. The move seems to confirm a shift of loyalties for Nguyen, a onetime ally of the South Bay Labor Council. She was the swing vote in the council’s decision to put Measures V and W on the ballot—a move SBLC vehemently opposed.