Peculiar to move city phone and voicemail to new vendor to save costs, staff says

City staff presented a plan July 21 to migrate the city’s voice and fax services to a cloud vendor, FluentStream, and the board approved a resolution to proceed with the change as part of a broader effort to reduce technology costs and address phone-system reliability. The project will include new desk phones and voicemail‑to‑email delivery.

Why it matters: Staff said the city currently pays Comcast for voice services and that consolidating services and moving to FluentStream would result in “considerable cost savings.” Staff and the city’s IT consultant also said the new platform would address current reliability problems with voicemail delivery and provide modern handsets for council and staff.

IT contractor Mel Bunting and staff explained that voicemail would continue to be delivered to email and that the migration would include swapping out phones at council desks. Board members asked operational questions about voicemail and light indicators; staff said the new system would provide improved voicemail reliability and new phones. The board adopted the resolution to enter the agreement with FluentStream.

Next steps: IT staff will coordinate the swap of handsets and the cutover to the FluentStream voice/fax service; staff said the change is expected to reduce ongoing telecom costs and to be coordinated with other technology upgrades.