• Mayor Sam Adams’ office will stop hosting regular First Thursday celebrations at City Hall even though the monthly events were listed in the mayor’s “100-day plan,” a list of projects he hopes to accomplish at the outset of his term. Adams’ office says the decision jibes with other parts of the plan that call for connecting with Portland’s artistic communities in what it calls new ways. But the timing of the announcement is curious; it comes just weeks after former legislative intern Beau Breedlove told The Oregonian he kissed Adams in a City Hall bathroom during a First Thursday event in 2005 when Breedlove was 17.

• The César E. Chávez Boulevard Committee is moving forward with its latest proposal to rename either 39th Avenue, Grand Avenue or Broadway for the late labor-rights activist. After failing to collect 2,500 valid signatures in October to support the change, the committee gathered 1,100 additional signatures before the Feb. 4 deadline. The Portland Auditor’s Office is verifying the new batch. Meanwhile, the committee also has turned in $3,000 to pay for mailings to residents and business owners along the three potentially affected streets.

• A Portland cop who claims he got a raw deal in what he calls a flawed internal-affairs investigation has asked newly appointed Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman to review the investigation into his involvement in a shooting. Officer Bert Nederhiser, a Portland cop since 1986, says Chief Rosie Sizer retaliated against him by ordering the internal-affairs investigation (which Nederhiser says was against Police Bureau policy in 2002, as there was no protocol for an IA investigation of an officer-involved shooting) when she was commander of Central Precinct. Nederhiser also claims Sizer’s protégé, Capt. Todd Wyatt (see “Good Cop, Bad Cop,” WW, Feb. 23, 2005), falsified records in the investigation. Sizer and Saltzman’s office did not reply to requests for comment.

• Pam Knowles, chief operating officer and general counsel for Portland Business Alliance, will run for Sonja Henning’s seat on the Portland School Board. Henning, who had previously indicated she did not plan to run again in the May 19 election for the seat representing Northeast Portland, recently declined to say whether that decision still holds.

• The monthly magazine Brainstorm NW is dead after 12 years. Among its regular columnists were Lars Larson, charter-school activist Rob Kremer and former Portland City Council candidate Dave “The Eastside Guy” Lister, who now writes periodically for The Oregonian. “We are not among the believers that print is dying,” the mag’s farewell editorial concluded. “Transforming, yes; dying, no. The public will always have an appetite for print, for news, for the truth.... The news, the truth, will always find a voice, and when there is a new way to tell it, you will hear from us again.” Publisher Jim Pasero blames the mag’s demise on the financial “tsunami” that hit the country in September, crippling businesses that didn’t have a strong cash position. “We really are crushed we can’t keep it going,” Pasero said.

• An arbitrator has awarded Accurate Balancing Agency Inc. a rare victory over both the state Bureau of Labor and Industries and organized labor. The state bureau wanted ABA to pay nearly $100,000 in back wages and other costs to HVAC-testing workers that the agency had argued were wrongly classified by the company as exempt from prevailing wage standards (see “Balance of Power,” WW, Dec. 5, 2007). “It’s been a two-year battle,” ABA owner Alan Penson said after the Jan. 28 decision in his company’s favor by a Washington County arbitrator. “I feel fantastic.”