COHASSET — September 15, 2026 — The Select Board put off recommending a $232,000 telephone system replacement until the Advisory Committee votes, pushing the decision to Sept. 22, when the special town meeting warrant closes. Chief Information Officer Ron Menard said the manufacturer moved the system’s end-of-life date from 2029 to this year and that failures have already forced overnight callouts to police and fire.
The Full Story
Ron Menard and Daniel Kelly from the Technology Department asked for $232,000 from capital stabilization for a cloud-based unified communications system. The on-premise Mitel PBX serving town buildings was installed in 2016 and was expected to be supported through fiscal 2029. The manufacturer pulled that date in, first to 2027 and then to 2026.
“Then they really ripped the rug out from underneath us and end of life the system at 2026,” Menard said.
Replacement parts now arrive refurbished or used, and the deputy chief information officer said even that equipment sometimes fails to start.
“In the last two months, we’ve had a couple of middle of the night calls to the Police and Fire Department to require me to come back in and get things up and working.” Dan Kelly, Assitant CIO [1:10:32]
The $232,000 is a one-time cost covering new handsets, replacement of 11-year-old network switches and rewiring of buildings that still carry telephone cable installed decades ago. The service agreement for the new platform runs $76,000 a year, against roughly $58,000 the town pays now. Member Greg Watts put the added operating expense at $20,000 a year. Menard said the real increase is smaller because $2,655 of the annual recurring total covers network switching rather than phone service, and that the IT operating budget would absorb the difference.
Staff screened five products against the Gartner Magic Quadrant and state procurement contracts and brought two finalists: RingCentral, offered through Ayotte Technologies, and Elevate, sold by the town’s current telephony provider, Harbor Networks. Staff gave the edge to RingCentral. Asked why Microsoft was set aside when the town already runs Microsoft products, the chief information officer said the town never received a quote from Microsoft or Cisco and called premium vendors hard to pin down on price and support. Staff also found $20,000 to $24,000 in state and federal pass-through fees built into these systems, and said vendors varied in disclosing them.
The board did not vote. Chair David Farrag said the Advisory Committee, which takes the request up the next evening, should weigh in first.
From the Water Department the board recommended $8 million in borrowing for lagoon construction and $2 million for a water treatment plant pilot plan, which the Water Commission had backed 2-1, along with a $300,000 transfer from water retained earnings to finish the 3A water main replacement. It recommended returning $400,000 left from the Osgood school roof project to the school capital stabilization fund; the article that would draw $2 million back out for the Cohasset Middle High School feasibility study also waits on the Advisory Committee. Members recommended $280,000 in free cash appropriations, including $150,000 to begin engineering three parking lots the public works department calls critical and $98,764 toward the amortized snow and ice deficit.
