What would you consider more of a win here: everybody in town has internet that they pay for through the city (either via taxes or fees), or Los Alamos owns and operates its own network? The model used for the other utilities may not work, for example the DOE puts up the money the lab uses to buy electricity which effectively subsidizes the town's costs, but they need power and don't really have much of an alternative (unless they fire up the reactors again...). The lab already has their own backbone connection so I doubt they're going to be interested in buying internet services from the town.