Last fall, more than 200 residents from the four neighborhoods that comprise the Washington community—Goodyear/Mastic, Tamien, Guadalupe/Washington, and Alma—assembled at the corner of South First/Monterey and Oak to fight back against the increase of prostitution in our community.

George Shirakawa has a reputation for missing important deadlines. It then comes as little surprise that the county supervisor under investigation for his misuse of county funds ignored Friday’s due date to reimburse roughly $12,500 in charges. If that wasn’t bad enough, Shirakawa also ignored an extension he was given to Monday, according to County Executive Jeff Smith.

Call it a preemptive strike but Ken Yeager deserves a little credit for trying to get something while knowing he’d probably get nothing. Last week, the president of the county Board of Supervisors sent a letter to San Jose Mayor, Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen and the City Council proposing a deal on how to continue funding the Santa Clara Healthy Kids Program. There’s just one problem. San Jose is broke and has no interest in giving another dime now that the county got Measure A passed.

San Jose’s police union leadership says it wants what’s best for its members. But how many members will be left if the Police Officer Association keeps on hosting other departments’ recruiters in its headquarters? In an ad in Sunday’s Mercury News, the Austin Police Department announced it was hosting two recruiting sessions in San Jose. After stopping by The National Hispanic University on Tuesday morning, the Texans moseyed over to the POA shop to hold court for three afternoon hours.

San Jose released its annual list of city salaries late last week, reminding us once again where the bulk of the municipal budget goes. Like most municipalities, payroll accounts for the city’s single highest expense. San Jose shelled out $596 million, or 62 percent of this fiscal year’s budget, on payroll for its 5,500 employees. This year, retired Sgt. John M. Seaman topped the list, receiving total compensation in the amount of $308,345.

Much has been said recently about law enforcement budgeting. One of the shared community goals is to increase the actual number of police officers. In addition, another shared community goal is for pension reform. In my opinion, these two objectives are inextricably linked.

Mayor Reed should come out of the closet. No, not that closet. I’m talking about the closet inhabited by local politicos who call themselves Democrats, because it suits their electoral ambitions despite plainly conservative fiscal—and social—values.

The deadline for semi-annual campaign disclosure forms covering the last half of 2012 came due last week. The documents provide a clearer picture of how winning and losing candidates raised money and how they spent it—or misspent it—in the final weeks of the campaign. We also tracked a number of political action committees (PACs). The most interesting findings: How much money was wasted in trying to defeat Councilmember Rose Herrera, a potential quid pro quo between the ChamberPAC and a person quoted in its ballot statement against minimum wage, and hangover debt for losing candidates Jimmy Nguyen and Robert Braunstein.

The Juvenile Justice Commission released a distressing report last week on the newly opened county receiving center for neglected and abused children. Sparky Harlan says the inspection was done just days after the center opened, and while they’re were some extenuating circumstances on relocating the children, most if not all of the issues have since been corrected.

Mayor Chuck Reed noted Thursday night that he was delivering his seventh State of the City speech. Next year he’ll have one final opportunity to get it right.

Omar Torres, executive director of the local nonprofit Santa Maria Urban Ministry (SMUM), joins San Jose Inside as a new columnist. In addition to writing about his work as a community organizer, Torres, who is an elected member of the Democratic Central Committee, will break down how politics work behind the scenes in San Jose and Santa Clara County.

The Mayor’s Gang Prevention Task Force held its fifth annual community summit Saturday, and more than a hundred San Jose residents were in attendance. For me, much of the information presented at the meeting served as an unfortunate reminder of the havoc gangs create in our communities.

San Jose’s casinos increasingly require more police attention, according to an annual audit of the two permitted card rooms going before the City Council. Other items on the agenda include an update on Measure B litigation and an audit of Team San Jose.

Councilman Don Rocha wants to explore the idea of imposing a standard for automatic recounts in event of a very close election in San Jose. Other items going before the Rules and Open Governemnt Committee on Wednesday include an amnesty offer to businesses behind on their taxes, study sessions and Councilmember Kansen Chu attempting to direct funds to libraries and a gun buy-back program.

When the calendar ticked over to 2013, a slew of bills authored last year by our local state senators and assembly members became actual law. Moving forward, those lawmakers have until late February to introduce bills, which means they’re in the middle of planning a legislative agenda for the coming year. We compiled a list of their just-enacted bills and called up those same representatives to ask them what they have planned for the upcoming year.

San Jose’s fire chief, William McDonald, will present a verbal report along with a 46-page written report about the department’s response times—and failure to accurately report them—at Thursday’s Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee meeting. Also on the agenda is a survey that finds San Jose police officers are about as racist as the rest of local citizens—which isn’t a good thing—and a report on crime around the city’s two casinos.