Morning News Round-Up -- 6.24.09: Atherton Politics...there is no substitute

The trial of accused molester Dr. William Ayres officially started. William Ayres Watch has this intro to the coverage that they will be providing on the trial:

"...If you are looking for strictly mainstream coverage of the Dr. Ayres trial, please go to the SF Chronicle or the San Mateo County Times. But if you are looking for a more complex and richer back story to the case, you will find it here..."

The Ayres' trial moves forward without one accuser testifying, however...

(While this trial could be viewed by some as a circus waiting to happen, there is a real circus (Circus Vargas) happening in San Mateo County...)

In a less high profile molestation case where a tae kwon do instructor molested a 13 year-old student in San Carlos. The case has been settled. The instructor pleaded no contest and will serve no more than a year in jail. Dr. Ayres may not be so lucky...

The Jackling House in Woodside will be demolished, thanks to a 5-2 vote of the Woodside City Council. One condition, though: the house will be deconstructed first by a preservationist whose goal will be do reconstruct the house somewhere, sometime... This is good news for Steve Jobs, but somehow we think he has more important things going on in his life, like recovering from a liver transplant...

Here are today's obligatory local government budget cutting/fee raising stories

• Parks and public works, and a bunch of other services are getting hit in the County budget...
• The Palo Alto Unified School District is preparing to plug a $7 million budget gap. Yikes...

Watch Dog has expressed our love for Atherton politics before... very cut-throat, very small-town, very good for Watch Dog to cover. There is a now a fight brewing about how to get items get on the City Council's agenda. Three Councilmembers (seemingly) want to make it more difficult, two want to make it easier. Unfortunately, it will take three votes to make it easier, so we expect the agendas in Atherton to be as sparse as they ever were...

San Mateo Union High School District, also feeling a budget pinch, is not deterred from its plans to put solar on its schools...

San Carlos Elementary will get a new (interim) Superintendent today. Craig Baker, the head of the Gardner Center for Youth in Their Communities at Stanford will be named at tonight's meeting.

The 6 year-old girl pulled from the water off the coast of Half Moon Bay over the weekend after her boat capsized is being released from the hospital. That's good news.

Speaking of HMB... PP Examiner gets in on the action describing the demise of Assemblymember Hill's Half Moon Bay Bail Out Bill. (As an aside, Watch Dog was the first to coin that phrase, we believe.)

And more HMB news.

Mavericks Surf Contest will have a longer window this coming season, and the decision to go or not to go won't be made by Jeff Clark, who invented the contest. Clark will stay on the Board, but the decision about who will make The Decision hasn't been decided.