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.

Sam Liccardo knows first hand the impact of traffic laws. The District 3 councilmember mentioned an unfortunate run in he had with a Caddy during a discussion today on reducing speed limits around Trace Elementary School.  “As somebody who’s been hit at 15 miles an hour, I can confirm that you don’t want to be hit at that, or at 25,” Liccardo said.

As 8pm rolled around at O’Flaherty’s Irish Pub on San Pedro Square, where the Sam Liccardo’s victory party was taking place, Tim Hennessey, Liccardo’s Republican opponent, walked by the crowded pub. The former Johnny V’s bouncer-turned-candidate approached Kyra Kazantzis, a local lawyer and Liccardo campaign volunteer, as she was strolling into the party.

“He asked me, ‘Is that Sam Liccardo’s party?’” she said. When she responded yes, “He said, ‘I’m Sam’s running mate, Tim Hennessey.’” He then bid adieu and walked away in his immaculate suit.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed seems to be headed for a showdown with the city’s unions over the way union pay negotiations are settled. In a May 5 San Jose Rotary Club speech, Reed called publicly for a revision of the City Charter in an audacious move to wrest power away from the unions representing the city’s firefighters and police force. Harking back to his days as a labor lawyer, Reed pointed to a clause in the Charter that forces the city into binding arbitration if and when negotiations with the unions break down.

In a rare move, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren announced this morning that she is throwing her support to Deputy District Attorney Jeff Rosen in his bid to defeat sitting DA Dolores Carr. “It’s true, I don’t get involved in local races very often,” she said after making a statement in front of the Santa Clara County Hall of Justice.

Things seemed pretty rosy back in 2007. Sure, the city was running a deficit, but the economy seemed solid enough for City Councilmembers to vote themselves a 20 percent raise, upping their salary from $75,000 to $90,000. After all, many city employees were earning more than them. Then came the crash. Then came the overwhelming deficit. Then came the pink slips and the pink slips and the pink slips—1,300 of them this month alone.

The Mayor has already asked city employees to take a 10 percent, across the board pay cut, noting that the average salary for city workers is now $88,000 (yes, average), just slightly less than City Councilmembers make.

The patio of San Jose’s Mezcal restaurant was chock full of local public officials and other political celebs last Friday evening for Sam Liccardo’s 40th birthday bash/campaign kick-off party. US Rep. Zoe Lofgren, recently named as a possible candidate to replace Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, made a surprise appearance—no word as to whether she ate any of the restaurant’s famous fried grasshoppers.

An odd alliance seems to have been forged between the left-leaning South Bay Labor Council boss Cindy Chavez and gang-bashing Republican crime-fighter Dolores Carr. Chavez last month made an impassioned plea to SBLC members for endorsing the district attorney, which reportedly surprised many of the executive board members and union delegates in attendance. According to a source who was present, Chavez stood and railed against challenger Jeff Rosen. Rosen, Chavez reasoned, is endorsed by Sam Liccardo, who is linked to former mayor Tom McEnery  and Deputy District Attorney David Pandori.

Mayor Chuck Reed had originally wanted to wait until November to consider a proposal to regulate medicinal cannabis collectives. Before yesterday’s vote, Reed said he wanted to see if voters would approve a state initiative that would legalize marijuana for recreational use. But after the proposal’s author, Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio, agreed to include some flexibility on zoning, taxes and the timing of the final City Council vote on the matter, Reed agreed to support it.

While we slash services like park maintenance, the City has millions of dollars in park fees, sitting in reserves.  Under state law, we charge developers fees to enable us to build parks, pools and community centers whenever they build a new housing project. For over a decade, we have been building community-serving amenities that we cannot pay to maintain or operate. It would be irresponsible to continue on this course.

With a record budget deficit approaching $100 million and the limited sources of income dwindling in the recession, San Jose’s City Council is looking for creative ways to raise income. According to City Councilmember Nora Campos, “the only one of the items that even polled fair and that we may have an opportunity to receive some revenues” is the expansion of San Jose’s licensed card tables. According to Mayor Chuck Reed, the resulting tax revenues could be as much as $2-3 million per year.

This week’s Metro Silicon Valley cover story, excerpted here, discusses a stimulus plan authored by Councilmember Sam Liccardo and three colleagues, and the reaction of downtown businesses to the city’s efforts to reawaken a downtown economy that went off-track.

The San Jose City Council weighed the possibility of hosting the U.S. Gymnastics Team’s Olympic Trials at today’s city council meeting. The Council went over a memorandum Mayor Chuck Reed issued on Jan. 15, outlining the city’s bidding effort for the event.

As this week brings news of our local unemployment rate just beginning to taper downward, local businesses are peering out from their frozen dens for the first signs of Spring.  That’s of little solace to thousands of our families still losing their homes and jobs, but it does raise a crucial question as we try to get people back to work: how can we best communicate to businesses that they should make San José the place to grow?

San Francisco pedestrians always know when they are walking by an Academy of Art University branch. Oone finds young, eclectically dressed hipsters, all loaded down with easels and tool boxes, many smoking American Spirits: art students. This modish scene may soon be re-created on the streets of downtown San Jose as the San Francisco-based AAU, the largest art design school in the country, is looking for a home in Silicon Valley.

Mayor Chuck Reed sent a letter to the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) today, asking that the group reconsider a decision regarding the route of the Sacramento/San Francisco/Los Angeles line, which may pass through San Jose’s Diridon station.
*UPDATED 3:40pm.