Regarding planning for the future, this seems like someone who was used to buying machinery was put in charge of buying technology. Sure, in five years the library might need a gigabit of bandwidth, but by then the Linksys WRT may well handle it for $100. It's not like you're buying a work truck, which may well serve the government for 5, 10, or even 15 years (assuming low usage), or a lathe that might be used intermittently for 35 years.

There's a lot to be said for uniformity in deployment, but that's why you would define, say, three tiers of supported hardware instead of kitting out everyone with top-of-the-line.