You can now get Coastsider headlines and reader comments on Twitter by following Coastsider_com.  They’re not posted in real time right now, but if you follow twitter it’s a good way to see what we’re posting.

We’re also running a feed of tweets mentioning Half Moon Bay on the bottom of our right-hand column.  Click on the links to see who posted and when.

The Chamber of Commerce has released this statement from the board of Coastside Family Medical Center that answers a number of questions the community has been asking about the closure of the center.

The Board of CFMC would like to take this opportunity to clear up some misconceptions.

The Board of CFMC greatly regrets having to close the clinic and wishes that we could have done more to make the transition less painful for both the patients and staff. We are very grateful to the staff that has worked so hard over the years and in this difficult time to provide the best health care possible to Coastside residents. We’re also very appreciative of community members who jumped in and tried to provide positive assistance for those who needed immediate help.

Why did you have to close the clinic?

One reason: no more money to fund the shortfall. The financial history is well known to most. The clinic was founded when Stanford University, after experiencing a $1.5m annual loss, abruptly closed the doors in 2001. A group of us rallied and formed a non-profit 50( c)3 to run the clinic as it always had been designed serving the insured, uninsured, and underinsured. We experienced a $600,000 loss the first year and had a loss of at least $400,000 each year thereafter.

How did you keep it open so long?

We relied on our fundraisers, grants, foundations, and personal contributions. All of the board were contributors to the clinic. Stanford Hospital and Mills Peninsula were generous. A small number of individual donors were extraordinarily generous. The lobby displayed a giving tree and donation box for all those who could contribute and be recognized. Numerous articles were run over the years in the Review pertaining to CFMC’s non-profit status and the challenges of contributions. Every year we sent an appeal to our entire list of past donors and new prospects. Our last annual appeal in November only brought in $18,000 and grant and foundation funding all but dried up in this economy. The clinic ran a $50,000 monthly loss, $70,000 if we had paid the county our rent. The board has always worked on a volunteer basis and the dollar equivalent of the professional work contributed by the board was immense. This was money we did not have to spend.

More answers, including why the community was not informed until the center closed, after the jump.

Coastsider’s Gallery is back after being offline for a couple of weeks following our move to a new server. As always, to go there, click on "Gallery" in the top menu.

You may have noticed that Coastsider has been down since Thursday. Naturally, this happened while I was traveling, so it took longer than usual to diagnose the problem and come up with a plan of attack.

Coastsider now on a faster and more reliable server. I’m still ironing out problems and migrating some of Coastsider’s other services to the new server. Coastsider’s Gallery will be down for the time being and you may encounter a few other bugs in the meantime.

Once I’ve confirmed that the site is stable, I’ll email members to let them know we’re back. If you see anything that looks broken, please add a comment to this story.

Barry Parr

Coastsider’s list of active Town Hall topics now includes information about who made the most recent post, what the post’s number was, and a portion of the post itself.

Any trusted member can start a topic in Town Hall without waiting for moderation, so it’s a great place to quickly post news and ask questions that might not rate a full post on the home page.

If you haven’t already tried Town Hall, now is a good time to take a look. The Active topics list is about one page down in the far-right column, right next to Recent Comments.

If you’re not already a trusted member, just email [email protected] with your real name. No one may post anonymously on Coastsider or Town Hall.

I’ll bet that you or someone you know have a tire or two in the yard or garage that you’ve wanted to get rid of for years. You’ll have the chance on Saturday June 21st, from 9am to 1pm at the Pescadero Transfer Station on Bean Hollow Rd.

In an effort to get green, and because grants have been made available, San Mateo County has hired a permitted hauler to pick up our unwanted tires of any size - with or without rims. Best part, the hauler plans on reusing and recycling as much as possible.

The last event in HMB actually rescued over 800 tires!! If you can’t make it to Pescadero on the 21st, there will be similar events in the near future. I’ll keep you posted.

Now anyone can create a page on Coastsider. Coastsider Insider is a place where Coastsiders can create and edit web pages about anything they’re interested in.

Insider is a wiki—a Web site that anyone can edit—pretty much like Wikipedia. Anyone with Town Hall posting access on Coastsider can create and edit pages in Insider.

You can keep track of new and changed pages using the Coastsider Insider updates box  on the right side of most pages.

Right now, there’s not much in the Insider, except for a few pages about local government agencies.  But you can make of the Insider what you will. It’s a good place for information about local nonprofits, clubs, sports, recreation, activities, events, and issues. And, like other Coastsider pages, Insider pages should be prominent in Google search results for Coastside-related links.

Insider is unmoderated, but our Terms of Use apply and we will be reviewing pages and changes to make sure that things are kept civil.  You should also read the Frequently Asked Questions section of main page of the Insider.

You should be able to add text right away without any training. And it’s easier to format your text, add photos, or link to other pages than on a regular Web page. Click on the "Edit" link on any Insider page, and take a look at how pages are structured.  You’ll probably catch on pretty quickly.

For more information about how to use our wiki software, click on "Wiki Help" in the right hand column of Insider.

You may notice some new, non-local, advertising on Coastsider. We’re experimenting with an ad network, mostly because I’m planning to write about ad network optimization in the near future and thought it would be interesting to try it out. It’s unlikely to generate much real revenue.

I’ve set the filters pretty high on the network, so the ads shouldn’t be too obnoxious, but I’ve already seen one "jittery dialog box" ad, and I’ll probably take the whole thing down if it becomes a problem. If you see any obnoxious ad behavior, drop me a line at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I’ll add it to the record. If you happen to notice which network delivered the ad, you can include that information as well, but it’s not necessary.

At the request of some members of the Midcoast Community Council, we’ve started a new forum for Coastsiders to discuss the council and the issues they should address. There may be some overlap with other forum topics, but we thought it would be a good idea to bring together all Midcoast governmental issues in one place.

MCC members will read the forum topics and discussions, and can ask for clarification of comments. However, California’s open meetings law (the Brown Act) forbids them from engaging in a substantive discussion of the issues except with proper notice at an MCC meeting.

You can’t comment on this message, but you can comment on the associated topic in the MCC forum.

I made a couple of significant errors regarding MCTV in my recent postings. The errors were entirely mine, but I was working from inadequate information because MCTV had ignored my repeated requests for information. I still haven’t heard from MCTV, but I did discover these errors and wanted to correct them here and in the original stories.

My first error was to say that MCTV’s board of directors is selected by the board, and not by its members. In fact, MCTV does offer memberships and its members do get to vote on who can be on the board. However, with $20 per year membership dues and only $685 in membership revenue in fiscal 2007, MCTV may have fewer than 35 paying members.

My second error was to say that MCTV’s executive director Constance Malach is paid $45,000 for 25 hours of work per week.  My source was MCTV’s 2005 tax return, which was the most recent I had available to me at the time. I now know that in fiscal 2007, according to MCTV’s most recent tax filings, Ms. Malach’s salary was $60,970 for 25 hours per week, a 37% increase over 2006.