TOWN STAFF REPORT RECCOMENDATIONS
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Consider approving expenditure of budgeted funds in the amount of $23,837.69 for Zoom Meeting and Telephone Services Licensing; and take appropriate action (Jason Power, Director of Information Technology)
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STAFF: Jason Power, Information Technology Director
BACKGROUND:
The approved FY24 budget includes funding for Zoom meetings and telephone services licensing up to $24,600. The quote received for October 2023 through September 2024 for these services is $23,837.69, which is $762.31 less than budgeted. The quoted amount is using Texas DIR negotiated pricing, which allows us to have better pricing for our relatively small organization.
Zoom services are used across our entire organization -
Westlake Academy - 123 phone licenses, 2 meetings licenses.
Town Hall - 34 phone licenses, 21 meeting licenses.
Fire Department - 14 phone licenses, 2 meeting licenses.
Phone licenses are used for phones for staff, classrooms, and common areas as well as virtual connections into the paging system at Westlake Academy, and panic buttons at Westlake Academy and Town Hall.
In FY23 we had 60 Zoom meetings licenses but reduced it to 25 meetings licenses for FY24 for two reasons:
1) Staff used Zoom meetings less than expected in FY23, so we are keeping licensing only for those who used the service.
2) Westlake Academy added 11.5 FTE’s and additional office and classroom space in the new modular buildings. The phone licensing needs to increase to provide phone service for the additional employees and spaces. Reducing the meetings licenses will also help cover some, but not all the additional costs for phone licensing for the new staff and spaces.
Further Background:
We started discussing options for business continuity regarding our phone system with Staff and Council in 2020. Our on-premises phone system had limited features, and our only option for business continuity during 2020 and part of 2021 was to forward calls to mobile phones or have staff on-site to answer calls. With the limited availability of hardware in 2021, we waited until 2022 to propose to Council that we move to a hosted phone system that would provide us with business continuity features, enhanced 911, and options for making and receiving phone calls on devices other than a wired desk phone.
We included this in the Budget Retreat Agenda Packet for the Council meetings on June 16 and 17, 2022. I have included a link to the packet and pointed out several pages containing references to the project below.
During that budget presentation, there were no objections to anything in the IT budget for Funds 100-20 or 600-20, which included funding for the Zoom project. Shortly after this meeting, the Town Manager asked if I could order the hardware in FY22 instead of waiting until FY23 since there could possibly be delays in receiving the hardware. Near the end of June, after the Town Manager resigned, the Deputy Town Manager asked me to move forward with the project. I received a quote from NWN Carousel to purchase the hardware at the Texas DIR contracted rate of $24,997.04. We submitted a PO for purchasing the phone hardware on July 6, 2022, and then on July 27, we submitted a PO for procuring the Zoom Phone and Meetings services, again at a Texas DIR contracted rate, for $24,603.36 for 1 year. Zoom services were set to begin on October 1, 2022, with the option to renew at the quoted rate each year for an additional two years. The initial cost of the services included training and assistance with configuration, which we began to utilize in October 2022, with the expectation for a full roll-out of hardware and services in December 2022.
Manufacturing and shipping delays pushed the hardware’s arrival to January and February 2023. The IT department was still heavily involved in the PowerSchool implementation at this time, and the implementation of servers received in December 2022 began in February 2023. Implementation of the new phone system includes deploying the hardware to all locations, as well as porting (migrating) or current phone numbers to the new system, both of which would be very disruptive to the operations of the Academy and Municipal offices, so we decided to wait until the summer for implementation. I reached out to our Zoom customer success manager in May to begin scheduling the implementation, and shortly after, Zoom went through several rounds of layoffs, which caused further delays. We planned to schedule the implementation again at the end of the week of July 4 since that would probably be a slow week for the municipality, and WA would be closed, but we were unable to confirm the date in time.
At the Town Council meeting for the Budget Workshop on June 22, 2023, the Zoom telephone and meetings purchase was discussed further and the information above was presented to Council. There were concerns over the recording features available in Zoom, so Staff added a section to the Personnel Manual that prohibits these activities and notified all employees of the change before the migration to Zoom telephone services occurred:
“5.04.01 Prohibited Activities
•An employee shall not electronically transmit, or create audio or video recordings of conversations, meetings (live or virtual), or conferences in the workplace or while conducting business, except where authorized and when all parties involved, including bystanders have knowledge of the recording;”
The recording option in Zoom telephone services were disabled before being made available to staff. Zoom telephone services were fully implemented and made available to all staff on August 1, 2023.
With the opening of the two new modular buildings on campus (with additional spaces for phones), as well as the additional 11.5 FTEs at Westlake Academy, Zoom phone licensing needed to increase from 141 to 156 seats. With the reduction in the number of meetings licenses we were able to keep FY24 pricing close to the same as FY23, but at a savings of 765.67 FY23 $24,603.36 vs FY24 $23.837.69).
Budget Retreat Agenda June 16-17, 2022 <https://laserfiche.westlake-tx.org/WebLink/DocView.aspx?id=481366&dbid=0&repo=WESTLAKE>
Page 31 - (FY23-25 is a typo and should be FY23-24)
Fund 600 - General Maintenance and Replacement Fund:
“The anticipated phone and network replacement in both the Municipal and Academic entities increase the overall costs in FY23-25. This fund has additional SLAs requests for Council’s consideration.”
Page 33 -
Fund 600 Five-Year Forecast Proposed FY23
Department 20
Line 1345 - Phone System/Peripheral Devices $12,500
Page 34
Fund 600 Five-Year Forecast Proposed FY23
Department 40
Line 1377 - Phone System/Peripheral $12,500
Page 50 -
Line 41 “100-43267-2000 System Admin & Support Services $5985 Hosted Telephone annual service; SLA shows related savings”
Page 69 -
SLA for IT Fund 100-20. Shows an estimated $20,000 for hosted telephone/telepresence yearly service.
FISCAL IMPACT:
FY24 Budget includes budgeted funds of $24,600 for Zoom meetings and telephone services licensing. The quoted total cost for FY24 is $23,837.69.
STAFF RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends approving the expenditure of budgeted funds of $23,837.69 for Zoom Meeting and Telephone Services for continuity of business operations for the Town of Westlake and Westlake Academy.
ATTACHMENT(S):
1) Current quote for Zoom meetings and telephone services licenses for October 2023-September 2024
2) 2022-09-12 Invoice IN441063 for Zoom meetings and telephone licensing
3) 2022-11-28 Invoice IN460776 for Polycom phones (partial order)
4) 2022-12-09 Invoice IN464084 for Polycom phones (partial order)
5) Resolution 23-65
TOWN COUNCIL ACTION/OPTIONS:
1) Motion to approve
2) Motion to amend with the following stipulations (please state stipulations in motion)
3) Motion to table
4) Motion to deny