The Ventura County Star's Kathleen Wilson reports that the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District has pulled a plan to offer Wi-Fi to area residents, but has refused to explain why it's doing so.

"Managers say the wireless service would defray costs for monitoring sewer operations electronically and give residents of the Hollywood and Silver Strand beach areas access to the Internet in an area with limited service," Wilson writes. "But they could not legally offer it under terms of a rewritten state law governing California's community service districts. Under pressure from telecommunications giant SBC, the law excluded telecommunications from the authority of these districts that perform functions from selling utilities to providing fire protection and flood control."

Make sense? Possibly... but that's not the official reason. Unfortunately, there is no official reason. According to Wilson, board president Marcia Marcus "said she could not recall whether legal counsel had advised the board that Wi-Fi could be legally offered, but that the board certainly never got any advice that it was illegal."