Councilmember Sam Liccardo submitted a memo late Thursday calling for an audit of four incubator programs funded by the San Jose Redevelopment Agency. The request responds to a 2009 study—unseen by most city officials for two years—which finds that RDA spent more than $30 million on business-building incubator programs which, it says, showed very poor returns on investment.

Medical marijuana clinics are having a big summer in downtown San Jose, as patients in oversized jean shorts and nightgown T-shirts can be found burning on the sidewalk almost any afternoon. Complaints of people lighting up on city streets are numerous—ask downtown’s Councilmember Sam Liccardo as well as police—but medicating in public isn’t illegal as long as smokers carry a doctor-prescribed card and stay clear of public transportation hubs.

More than a few eyebrows lifted last week when Councilmember Sam Liccardo proposed raising the city’s sales tax to help fund police and firefighter jobs. With 73 officers expected to lose their jobs on July 1, according to police union VP Jim Unland, Liccardo showed the kind of political savvy that was conspicuously absent this spring, when he voted against approving union concessions because he said they didn’t go far enough

Councilmember Sam Liccardo has drafted a memo to explore a ballot measure that would increase local sales taxes to specifically fund public safety.

The gloves have officially come off in labor negotiations between the city and public employee unions, and whispers of potential strikes are being heard in certain City Hall corners. On Tuesday, the City Council imposed 10 percent cuts in total compensation for four unions by an 8-3 vote. The cuts in pay and benefits will affect more than half of the city of San Jose’s employees.

After Mayor Chuck Reed and most of the San Jose City Council took a two-hour tongue lashing Tuesday from city employees, retirees, union representatives and even staffers of several state legislators, the council voted 8-3 to push forward with Reed’s declaration of “fiscal and public safety emergency.” That word—”emergency”—allows the city to significantly toughen its stance in pension negotiations with public employees.

Declaring a fiscal and public safety emergency, Mayor Chuck Reed unveiled his fiscal reform proposal Friday afternoon at City Hall. The reforms will focus on pension and health care for current and future employees, and some actions will require changes to the city charter, meaning measures will need to be put on a ballot for voter approval. The proposal being put forward was co-signed by Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen and councilmembers Sam Liccardo and Rose Herrera.

The San Jose City Council once again fell short on Tuesday in its efforts to craft a plan to deal with the popularity of medical marijuana clubs in the city. Many of the ideas being proffered by city staff, Mayor Chuck Reed and councilmembers Rose Herrera, Sam Liccardo and Pete Constant, were wildly ambitious, including things that no other municipality has tried in the 14 years since the passage of Prop 215.

Updated with correction: Apr. 14.

The debate over what to do with the city’s 100-plus medical marijuana collectives looks like it will finally result in some action Tuesday, when the City Council will vote on setting up a complete regulatory program.

After the City Council voted 9-2 on Tuesday in support of the agreement reached with San Jose’s Firefighters Union, three more unions, representing city architects and engineers, trade worker supervisors, and mid-level managers, have reached a similar agreement.

UPDATED WITH CORRECTION: Firefighters Union Local 230 and the city are on the verge of reaching an agreement that would reduce the deficit and possibly even get back some jobs. The most radical concession involves the introduction of a two-tiered retirement plan, and distinguishes between employees hired before and after the agreement is signed. It will be the first such plan for public employees in the entire country.

San Jose’s oldest deli, Chiaramonte’s Sausage and Deli, opened a location at the airport after a meet-up arranged by the city. Then air traffic plummeted. The airport deli is likely to be out of business within two weeks.

A couple of days before Debra Figone finalized her selection of Chris Moore as the city’s next chief of police, councilman Sam Liccardo referred to the candidates’ race as “the elephant in the room”—Moore, acting chief for the last three months, is white while the other finalist, Oakland Chief of Police Anthony Batts, is black. The real “elephant in the room,” though, was an inflammatory online report by a small newspaper in Long Beach.

Though trailing to Xavier Campos, District 5 candidate Magdalena Carrasco’s election night party was nonetheless packed with about 100 exuberant wellwishers.

Downtown San Jose councilman Sam Liccardo attempted to set a mood for the evening: “You guys took on the machine, and I know your going to win tonight!,” Liccardo shouted, to a round of applause.

Like an underwater homeowner on an adjustable-rate mortgage in late 2008, Team San Jose was unfazed by money issues in the months leading up to its being slapped with a default notice. And like a feckless federal regulator, the city official charged with overseeing the local business-union-municipal alliance was upbeat—right up until the report that $750,000 had fallen off the truck.

Team San Jose, the peculiar alliance of hoteliers, unions and city bureaucrats that runs the city’s entertainment and convention venues, is facing the biggest crisis in its short, contentious history.

Last Wednesday, finance chief Scott P. Johnson issued a report showing that the quasi-public entity overshot its budget by $750,000, and tangled its bookkeeping so badly that director Dan Fenton can’t even say exactly where the missing money went. Then on Monday, City Councilmember Sam Liccardo turned up the heat, asking city manager Deb Figone to dig into the hotel-tax-funded entity, which is run by Fenton and an executive committee including South Bay Labor Council boss Cindy Chavez.