WEDNESDAY, Aug. 8, 2012

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Portola Valley doesn’t want stoplights

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ost P School board critic to run BY KRISTEN PETERS Daily Post Staff Writer

Residents of the idyllic town of Portola Valley don’t want stoplights to muddy their rural lifestyles, even if that means getting used to rush hour traffic. The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors decided July 10 to drop the idea of installing two stoplights where Alpine Road hits La Mesa and La Cuesta drives, after hearing from five speakers who vehemently opposed [See PORTOLA, page 22]

BY ANGELA RUGGIERO Daily Post Staff Writer

Ken Dauber, a critic of the Palo Alto school district who has pushed for changes to the school calendar and graduation standards, said yesterday he’s running for school board. His decision to run means there

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4 candidates seek 3 seats will be a contested school board race this fall. Before he announced, there were just three candidates for three seats. If nobody else had entered the race, those three — incumbents Camille Townsend, Me-

lissa Baten Caswell and former Juana Briones PTA president Heidi Emberling — would have been appointed without an election. The 2009 school board election was canceled when only two candidates

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signed up for the two seats up for grabs on the five-member board. Dauber said he wanted to make sure there was a contested election. “The schools are too important to not have a discussion with everyone in the community,” he said. Dauber, 49, is the co-founder of [See SCHOOL, page 22]

DAUBER

Dementia hoax took D.A. by surprise

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CASINO OPENS: After months of delays due to concerns by police, Casino M8trix (that’s how it’s spelled) opened last night in San Jose, right across Highway 101 from rival Club 101. More than 1,000 people poured into the cardroom which has 49 tables and 15 types of games.

BY JAMIE MORROW Daily Post Associate Editor

TAX ON BALLOT: Santa Clara County supervisors gave final approval yesterday to putting a ballot measure before voters in November to raise the sales tax an eighth of a cent, from 8.375% to 8.5%. Among the supervisors voting to put the tax on the ballot was Liz Kniss, who is running for Palo Alto City Council.

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Gas up as much as 35 cents a gallon

PAY CUT? While Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking a temporary 5% pay cut from state employees, 140,000 of those workers are posed for raises next year of up to 3% under existing labor contracts, Bloomberg News reports. The temporary pay cut will likely end before the raises occur.

Wholesale gasoline prices jumped be experiencing some higher prices 23 cents to 35 cents a gallon yester- at the pump. How long it will last, we day following an explosion and fire just don’t know.” The Chevron refinery produced at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, 150,000 barrels of gasoline a day the AAA Northern California said. “The oil industry is basically try- — 16% of the region’s daily gasoline ing to figure out what the poten- consumption. And because Califortial loss will be for the upcoming nia gas stations are required to sell a months,” said AAA spokeswoman [See GAS, page 22] Cynthia Harris. “We will definitely • Fire angers residents, page 7

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San Mateo County prosecutors say the report from Napa State Hospital suggesting that Dr. William Ayres has been faking dementia and is actually competent to stand trial again on child molestation charges came as a complete shock to them. They had been convinced that the former San Mateo child psychiatrist accused of abusing his paAYRES tients had the irreversible disease, and were resigned to fighting for him to spend the rest of his life at Napa State Hospital. “It changes the whole field of this case,” District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told the Post yesterday. “The approach previously was, this man belongs in Napa State. Now the approach [See AYRES, page 22]

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Daily Post Wednesday, August 8, 2012

NEWS

PORTOLA –––––– the lights. The $500,000 stoplights would’ve been erected in Ladera, a small bedroom community just east of Portola Valley’s town limits. But town historian Nancy Lund said that the lights would’ve heavily impacted Alpine Road — a route that many Portola Valley residents take to get back to their homes. “We love that rural quietness,” Lund said. “And everybody is anxious to keep that. I think we are the only town in the county without a stoplight.” She said that residents also take Alpine Road to get to the increasingly popular Ladera Country Shopper, which includes Bianchini’s Market. The presence of the small shopping center has increased the number of cars trying to squeeze onto Alpine Road. Modernization marches on Although the shopping area has been there for decades, Lund said that, within the last five years, there’s been a handful of new restaurants open up, along with a new market. And the old ranch houses that became a trademark of the town are being knocked down and replaced. These changes are all part of a new wave of modernism being brought into Portola Valley, Lund said. “The town is going through a kind of renaissance,” she said, which makes the town’s resistance to stoplights all the more important to preserve its rural feel. Despite residents’ outcry against the two stoplights, Supervisor Don Horsley said that something needs to be done to alleviate traffic congestion in the area. “During rush hour, it’s almost impossible to turn out onto Alpine Road safely,” Horsley said. Horsley said that the county’s public works employees will work with Portola Valley officials to come up with an alternative solution to the gridlock aside from the proposed stoplights. “They want to preserve the bucolic nature of the town,” Horsley said. “They don’t have any traffic lights and something like that changes the ambiance.”

SCHOOL –––––––– the group We Can Do Better Palo Alto, which tries to reduce student stress. In recent years Dauber, with wife Michele, advocated for changes in high school graduation requirements, a change in school calendars so students take finals before winter break, and an ongoing push for counseling in response to student suicides. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince board members of the urgency of issues and the desirability of issues,” said Dauber. “I’ll probably be more effective if I’m on the board.” Incumbent Townsend said she is not surprised Dauber is running, and that every election has its challenges. “If you’re up against anyone, it makes it harder,” said Townsend. “But ultimately the question is, do

you think I’m the best candidate? Absolutely. All the candidates have great strengths to them. I bring some experience and a love of my work.” Dauber, a Google software engineer, has five children, one of whom, Elliot, 11, is still in the district. Dauber has also served on the district’s homework committee, which convinced the school board to set limits on how much time students should spend on homework each night. He said he wants to improve counseling at Gunn High School by using the model of the teacher-advisory program at Palo Alto High School. Candidates have until Aug. 15 enter the race.

AYRES –––––––––– is, he’s competent, let’s go to trial.” The report by Dr. John McIlnay, a psychologist working for the state of California, indicates the now80-year-old Ayres faked the symptoms of dementia and was able to use his knowledge of the field to get past tests meant to discover so-called malingering, Deputy District Attorney Melissa McKowan said at a hearing Friday. Hearing today Judge John Grandsaert has sealed the report and Ayres’ attorney is contesting the doctor’s finding of competency. Ayres’ attorney will also ask, at a hearing this morning, for his client to be released on bail until a hearing on the competency matter in October. Prosecutors want to keep him in custody in San Mateo County Jail, where he has been moved from Napa. McKowan said his time at Napa was the first time people had been able to observe him in a nonforensic interview situation. Nondoctors such as the custodial staff who shuttled Ayres from place to place made observations to McIlnay, who took them into account in his report, she said. At the trial last year, a jury hung 8-4 over whether he was competent to aid in his own defense, with eight members saying he wasn’t. That jived with all the doctors who said he wasn’t, said McKowan. “I heard the court’s own experts say he was at best borderline competent,” she said. She said that while he could appear lucid, including understanding the charges against him and understanding his situation in court, it had appeared that his short-term memory had suffered so much that he could not aid his attorney in his own defense. She said that now, she fully intends to push for him to be declared competent at the October hearing. “Once that occurs, we will proceed to trial on the original charges as quickly as possible,” she said. The Ayres case has been a long legal saga in San Mateo County. The former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry had a long history of working with San Mateo County, initially in the public health department. Later he went into private practice in San Mateo, but received many referrals from the juvenile court and probation departments. He was arrested in April 2007 and charged with nine counts of child molestation of five boys under the age of 14 that took place from 1991 to 1996.

Prosecutors also alleged that there were more than 30 other victims whose abuses fell outside the statute of limitations for charging. Four of them testified in court. Compared with the Penn State case A man in his mid-40s who claims to be a victim of Ayres but who fell outside the statute of limitations told the Post that he thinks that Ayres’ co-workers and the authorities let him slide for years and cited issues similar to those with Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno at Penn State. “Reputation issues and general apathy to deal with child sex crimes are the main reason Ayres was able to get away with it for so long,” he said in an email. A criminal trial in the summer of 2009 ended with an 11-1 hung jury, and prosecutors decided that August to retry the case. The criminal proceedings were suspended when Ayres’ attorney, Jonathan McDougall, questioned his client’s competency in light of “an insidious onset of dementia,” which led to the trial over his competence. After it ended in a mistrial, the defense and prosecution agreed in August that Ayres should be committed. “We always pushed for going to Napa State,” Wagstaffe said. “If we was incompetent, we wanted him in a state hospital, not in some community setting where he could live an easy life.” But Victoria Balfour, an advocate for a group of the alleged victims, said they have been telling prosecutors all along that Ayres was faking. After the mistrial and before Ayres was committed to Napa, the group hired a private investigator who videotaped Ayres chatting with friends at a San Francisco restaurant. The investigator heard Ayres joke that one good thing about having Alzheimer’s is you can use it to your benefit, Balfour said. However, while they had the investigator’s report, because of state wiretapping laws, the video did not include sound. “Without hearing the conversation, it had no ability to persuade anyone,” McKowan said. “It was a man silently sitting at a table, gesturing and moving his mouth with three other people. The only evidence of what he was saying was the report of this paid investigator.” It was nothing that would have had any hope of persuading a jury, she said.

GAS ––––––––––––– special low-pollution blend of gasoline, oil companies can’t bring in gasoline from nearby states to replace what the refinery produced. That scarcity causes prices to go up. Christopher Thornberg, principal economist of Beacon Economics, said oil companies could immediately begin importing gasoline from nearby states if Gov. Jerry Brown were to approve an emergency order lifting the gasoline requirements. It’s unlikely Brown would lift the requirements, however. So Thornberg said the amount of the price increase will depend on how fast the refinery returns to full production.

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