Commentary

The Iowa municipal wireless vote in perspective

I took a few days to think about this before commenting at length, in part because I didn’t want to be accused of engaging in sour grapes grumbling (a risk anyway). So in an attempt to keep things grounded in facts, let’s look at the result of the votes in 32 Iowa communities last week on municipal wireless plans. Seventeenââ?¬â??one more than half–voted yes. But yes to what? The referendums are virtually non-binding. Basically, a group of cities who already were thinking about municipal systems asked their citizens for permission to keep thinking about municipal systems. Viewed from this perspective, it’s notable that almost half of the towns declined to give it.