Nice colours! I don't think they were there before, right? I definitely like the blue better than the previous color! Keep blogging!

The cities already manage the sewers, roads, and (in most cities) the electricity grid. What if the wireless internet grid is treated as similar piece of essential infrastructure?
The question is whether wireless is essential infrastructure or not. There's a lot of research being done on whether internet access can help bring people out of poverty, and the result of that research will be an interesting point in this debate. If it does help bring people out of poverty, then you could argue it's just as important to keep in public hands as the sewers, roads, police services, etc.
Whether municipalities own and run the wifi is interesting in other issues too, such as network neutrality.
On another note, you could say that like Boston, Toronto (and not the private sector) will control its wifi network, since Toronto Hydro is owned by the City of Toronto.

I totally agree with your posting. It seems like cities should be focused on improving services, fixing roads, etc. Municipal Wi-Fi might help the cities reduce their headcounts as they point more and more people to their web sites vs. actual staff. And where will cash-strapped citizens get the hardware to even access the Internet? I linked to this story on my blog, http://aronsonfile.blogspot.com.

Perhaps these municipal government WIFI initiatives will help to address the biggest gap of the Internet - local content - could it be that free connectivity will finally unleash location based services and help to gather user/local citizens expressions of their experiences they want to refer on to their trust radius?

WIFI is a nice technology but its not really suited to the grand aspirations of the cities. Public wifi in the streets is possible given an access point every 75 metres, and cities are great at putting things in the streets. However, people, especially in Canada, want internet access in their homes, businesses, shopping areas, and other indoor spots. Covering these indoor areas requires more access points, and indoor access to homes and businesses that cities just do not have. I can see wifi for areas like Bay Street, Yonge St, entertainment districts, city hall plaza, but not everywhere. It is not a panacea for internet to everyone, it is simply a cheap unlicensed low power system that can be useful for small areas. If cities want everyone to have internet access, it would be better to subsidize a home internet provider who could provide it to everyone. However, that means more taxes and who wants that? Maybe we should make Ontario Lotto pay a % of profits for internet for everyone - use a tax on stupidity to make people smarter - I like that.