This past week, Q-line asked: “Should City Hall render the entire city of Santa Monica a ‘hotspot,’ with Internet access for all?” Here are your responses: ✆ “Internet access for all sounds like another entitlement program to me. And the answer is ‘no,’ the city should not get involved.” ✆ “When I use a photocopier at the library, a parking meter at curbside or if I use a pay telephone anywhere in the city, I pay. Web site users should pay.” ✆ “What’s with the free ride for laptop users and Internet junkies. Make them pay for such use. We are sponsoring enough free-loaders in this city already.” ✆ “I don’t think they should waste money doing all this wireless Internet stuff. If people can afford to pay for their laptop, they can pay for their Internet service.” ✆ “No hotspot. We don’t need more brain-idling electronic smog.” ✆ “The answer is ‘no.’ Technology changes and it changes quickly. The city is known for spending millions on wasteful projects. We’ll only find this one to be another. So the city should wait and technology should advance, and then perhaps, we should consider.” ✆ “I think it would be a great idea to make Santa Monica an Internet hotspot for access for everybody. The way to pay for it would be out of the utility tax that all of us, as residents, get gouged for by the city of Santa Monica — 10 percent on gas, electricity, phone and water. The money is there, use it.” ✆ “No, City Hall should not wi-fi the city because they’ll spend millions in out of date technology, and then turn around and tax us for it. Or they’ll tax us for it first and then go ahead and do the wrong thing, just like the water tax that they’re trying to do. These idiots are incompetent.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 7, 2006. Read the original PDF.