There are a number of different conceptions of what "public broadband" means, and what it would include (organization, business model, services), especially in the case of Syracuse. There is the idea of having an up-to-date fiber to the home (FTTH) system that the city would own and would compete against Time Warner Cable and Verizon for all services. Then there are more limited approaches such as city-wide WiFi, or an institutional network, i.e., municipal connections between various sectors (education, tech, gov, non-profits), which could be part of an FTTH network. And how does all this relate to the new initiative coming from the FCC and the administration (stimulus money etc.)? I'll touch on each topic and then answer the question on stimulus.
