I recently voted to use $1.2 million of the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s budget to keep 170 low-income children in Head Start programs this school year. The program had been cut due to the federal sequestration. Each dollar put into quality early learning experiences returns at least $7 to society through increased productivity, while also reducing the need for federal assistance and fewer teens/adults entering the criminal justice system.

After four months of negotiating, threatened strikes and sickouts, Santa Clara County reached an agreement Friday with its biggest union, whose employees agreed to chip in more from their own paychecks for healthcare in exchange for small raises.

Joseph Di Salvo, a county Board of Education trustee, implores President Obama to rededicate the country to meeting its education goals when he speaks at the 50th anniversary celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s most important speech.

In a move New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might appreciate, Councilman Ash Kalra wants to ban sugary drinks from all city-owned buildings and city-sponsored events. Other items on the Rules and Open Government Committee agenda include a potential raise in the airport’s noise curfew fines and David Wall alleging that the Environmental Innovation Center fiasco was a ponzi scheme.

The people in charge of providing financial and protective services for Santa Clara County residents run a department lacking structure and accountability, according to a just-released Civil Grand Jury audit that goes before the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. Other items on the board agenda include grand jury reviews for health inspections of food trucks and farmers markets, and a review of Juvenile Hall.

Ticked off that Santa Clara County refused to continue labor negotiations over the weekend and still demands forced overtime to patch up staffing shortages, the county’s largest union sounds like it’s ready to strike. SEIU 521 will hold a noon press conference to announce the decision, where it is expected to demand benefits that would make it easier to recruit and retain qualified workers.

Starting in September, as a result of federal budget sequestration earlier this year, rent will rise significantly for Santa Clara County’s Section 8 tenants, close to 60 percent of whom are elderly or disabled.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen has been touting his swollen campaign piggy bank to the press as a warning to potential challengers in 2014, and a re-election fundraiser hosted by beer distributor and philanthropist Mike Fox Sr. earlier this month, which included former San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore among guests, only added to the $131,000-plus Rosen raised in the first six months of this year. But word is the DA’s already strong chances of staying in office will get the kind of Series-A funding startups love. A group of Sand Hill tech investors are in the process of forming an independent expenditure (IE) committee to support Rosen, and they’ve approached Democratic operative Jude Barry to manage it.

The nation spends more than $60 billion a year to keep more than 2.5 million people incarcerated. If we continue to spend our money on locking people up instead of investing in early childhood education, nothing will change.

UPDATE: SEIU approved a strike authorization with 96 percent of voting members in favor.

Santa Clara County workers marched down Hedding Street to the tune of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Going to Take It” Monday evening, as SEIU 521 union members voted for the right to authorize a strike.The voting continues Tuesday as county officials and labor union negotiators have yet to form an agreement.

Santa Clara County inmates will continue receiving mail after jail officials abandoned a contentious plan to limit correspondence to just postcards. Jail chief John Hirokawa originally brought up the idea earlier this summer in hopes of limiting the amount of drugs smuggled in through envelopes or postage stamps. But the community put up a fight, saying the mail restriction could dry up prisoners’ ties with friends, family and life outside their cell. The county jail and Elmwood Correctional Facility receive about 200,000 pieces of mail a year. If the postcard-only policy passed, the county would have become the first in Northern California to enact such a ban and one of a few-dozen in the nation.

Since slashing construction fees for high-rise development in downtown, two towers have broken ground, including the $135 million 23-story project at One South Market. Hoping to spur more nearby development, the City Council on Tuesday will consider whether to vote in a similar half-off discount for buildings of any size as long as they create jobs. Other items on the agenda for the first council meeting of the 2013-114 fiscal year include another look at building restriction height around the airport, a potential study of the city’s sewer system and an update on the city’s graffiti abatement contract.

The South Bay Labor Council spent almost a quarter-million dollars supporting Cindy Chavez’ successful run for a county supervisor seat, according to forms filed last month with the Registrar of Voters. The details of the labor organization’s staggering campaign fundraising and spending have not been made public until now. Taking into respect money spent by the Chavez campaign and other groups supporting her, it appears more than $750,000 was spent getting her into office. While few candidates can pull together a coalition of support like Chavez, the coordination between her campaign and outside groups raises some serious questions for the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Mike Potter, husband of Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, appears neither ready to forgive nor forget slights real and imagined in the lead-up to last week’s election. At last week’s Democratic Central Committee meeting, Potter blasted the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce for its efforts to help defeat his wife, and/or support her opponent, Teresa Alvarado—perspective dictates the distinction. There’s just one issue with this indignation—Potter’s job as a state and governmental affairs rep for Cisco, one of the largest members of the local Chamber, requires him to work directly with the Chamber and its policy makers.

Almost two weeks before she won the election for Santa Clara County Supervisor’s District 2 seat, ex-labor leader Cindy Chavez said she would not cross a picket line. That promise may get tested early since SEIU 521, the 8,000-employee county union whose contract is up for renewal, strategically postponed negotiations until Aug. 11, after the special election, in hopes of gaining a more favorable outcome. About 6,400 of those union members work at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. The day after Chavez was voted in, some technicians in the hospital’s radiology department staged a “sick out,” which is not quite a strike but a coordinated effort to call in sick to work to make a statement. Enough participated that it left the hospital scrambling to schedule replacements.

As a former civics teacher and principal who championed the role of student government, the lack of voter turnout in last week’s Board of Supervisors election concerns me. The race was well covered by the media and more than $1 million was spent to reach voters. And yet, only 20.77 percent of registered voters in District 2 participated in the election.