GhostDoggy
join:2005-05-11
Duluth, GA
| There is no Free Ride, Portland
Nor is there a free school lunch for that matter.
The city doesn't print its own money, but rather it collects money from its residents. How many and under what threshold of agreement must the Portland residents say YES in order to justify a costly build out to be 'popular'?
BTW, has Portland already defined broadband as a utility, or are they now feeling they have the cajones to play big-business with someone else's money? Its nice to spend the taxpayers money, or someone else's money for that matter, and the worse that can happen is you scam some of it for yourself and get booted from office--maybe even a little jail time.
$470 Million is a lot of money. How much is that per household or per capita? The 2000 Census put their population at 529121. That makes the per capita ~$888 for the build out. So, how many Portlandites are writing checks to cover this, and what other services might get canned or cut as a result of city coffers being dry?
And if its going to go the way of private buildout then why not simply contract with Qwest to build it out at the city's expense? I'm a little lost. If Qwest builds it then the city offers nothing on the build out. If another for-profit company does it the city offers build-out assistance? Where is the rational in that??? |
