Drew there is more to this story than meets the eye- Seems someone in the city government wanted to run the network by committee and the head network guy thought this was a real bad idea.
I think Slashdot has some information, a quick search should turn up what your looking for but the long and short is some people were looking to meddle in a place that they really really should not be meddling in and the network admin in San Fran is a tad overprotective of the citys network.
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