BuckeyeBlog

In his push for an increase in the Toledo income tax, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner makes this claim:

I hope and pray that thoughtful people will realize that there is no evidence the city of Toledo has in any way taken taxpayers’ dollars and irresponsibly spent [them]. I think the track record of safety, cleanliness, and improvements speaks for itself.

Considering that last year the Mayor was championing a $2.6 million citywide wireless Internet service, this claim should certainly not be taken at face value. Of course, the wireless Internet plan fell apart. As the Toledo Blade reported this week, the city dodged a bullet on this one:

The California company that last year offered to blanket the city of Toledo with wireless Internet capability has run into financial troubles and halted plans to install free wireless networks in other cities.

Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner’s vision for free citywide wireless access crashed last year when MetroFi of Mountain View, Calif., said the cost to the city could have been $2.16 million over five years.

Logan Kleier, Wi-Fi project manager for the city of Portland, Ore., said the company stopped building Portland’s free citywide wireless network and has asked for as much as $9 million in public money to finish….

Officials from MetroFi last month said they stopped plans to install free wireless networks in Aurora, Ill., and Naperville, Ill.

The original deal in those cities was similar to the original deal Toledo sought: It would provide free high-speed Internet access to residents with an advertiser-driven model that would cost nothing.

Mr. Kleier said MetroFi changed its business model last year and is asking cities to invest public money. “The mayor is not interested in that,” Mr. Kleier said. “It raises the question if the city is investing in a company.”

The free Wi-Fi model has been on shaky ground nationwide.

Of course, I seem to recall someone predicting problems with Toledo’s plan when they were discussing it.

With a track record of supporting wasting taxpayer money on fanciful schemes like citywide wireless Internet, taxpayers in Toledo need to take a close look at Mayor Finkbeiner’s claims “that there is no evidence the city of Toledo has in any way taken taxpayers’ dollars and irresponsibly spent [them].”

Tags: Telecom

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.