Toledo, Ohio, IS director fired after walking out: The Toledo Blade says that the mayor had harsh words about the IS director's preparation for an upcoming meeting with the city council about MetroFi's proposal to unwire Toledo. According to this article, director Patsy Scott alleges that Mayor Carty Finkbeiner told her to threaten the library levy if the head of libraries didn't endorse the Wi-Fi plan. The mayor denied this; the mayor's spokesperson was at the meeting and agreed with the mayor. Scott walked out of the meeting to write a letter of retirement; the mayor handed her hat instead. Scott was appointed by the previous  mayor. An article on Saturday suggests that the Wi-Fi effort may not proceed.

At issue was perception of a contract that commits Toledo to purchasing $2.16m in services from MetroFi over five years. The Toledo Blado's parent company was also bidding on the network, and the city said that it didn't receive a real proposal from them. The article notes, "Ms. Scott and Mr. Davies [the mayor's spokesperson] said they believe the contract was misunderstood by the public, and that she and Mr. Davies were prepared to show how it would be funded at council’s meeting on Monday." Not surprising that the public misunderstood; the Toledo Blade didn't really explain the funding issue well in their coverage.

A little more Sacramento detail: The network approved yesterday to be built by a four-company consortium (Azulstar, Cisco, Intel, and Seakay) will have free, best-effort service of 1 Mpbs, paid premium 1 Mbps for $15 per month, and 3 Mbps service for $50 per month. The 3 Mbps service includes a free VoIP over Wi-Fi phone. The city will be an anchor tenant on the network.

Waukesha, Wisc., network not testing out well so far: A report will show that early tests reveal a city network would be more expensive and less "effective" than planned. A firm has been testing locations for a year within the city, which is a relative eternity in wireless time. Speed was lower and density wasn't high enough in tests. The firm Rite Brain would pay for the network, as far as I can tell from this piece.