City Hall to Update Phone System Ahead of Schedule

Frequent telephone issues prompted Willow Springs City Administrator Beverly Hicks to update on the struggles employees have had communicating with citizens by phone. Several times in recent months, the phone system has malfunctioned or stopped receiving calls altogether. The current phone system has been in use since 2003. 

Hicks provided Council with a support letter and cost estimate from Grennan Communications for a cloud-based telephone service. The start-up cost will be approximately $7,400.00. However, the City’s monthly telephone expenses would be reduced by over $400.00.

Hicks further discussed all the benefits of switching to the new telephone service, such as onetouch messaging to all City employees during an emergency, and a mobile app to accept phone calls outside of the office. Hicks stated that another benefit to this service is plug-and-play, which means employees can take the desk phone anywhere, plug it into an outlet, connect to Wi-Fi, and accept City calls wherever they are.

Hicks concluded that normally this would have been considered for the 2022 budget, but the current telephone system becomes obsolete by October 1. Council agreed that this is an issue and needs to be addressed and passed a unanimous Motion to move forward immediately with the system upgrade.