Officials hope new phones will keep lines open
System figures to be unimpaired by poor weather
The Daily Mail
Jan. 18, 2009

Athens — Heavy rain and winds will no longer disrupt phone service in the Town of Athens office.

The town board decided to upgrade their current copper-wire phone service to one that will run over the Internet, offered by CornerStone, an upstate phone company.

Fourteen phones in the office would be connected to the system.

Jackie Berry and Paul Caputo presented the system and its various features to the board members at their meeting Tuesday night.

Staff will have the ability to forward calls coming in on their official lines to a home line or a cell phone.

The system will offer an automated answering menu to callers if all the lines are busy and individual messages could be directed to e-mail, as well, Caputo said.

Each of the 14 phones that would be connected to the system would have the capability of handling four different phone lines.

Board members were impressed by the phones and the phone system.

“It gets us out of the 1950s and put us around the year 2000,” Councilman Eugene Hatton said.

Town Supervisor Albert Salvino said he liked that with the new system, because everyone could always be reached by town residents.

The company has managed technology for the Coxsackie-Athens School District and phone systems for a handful of businesses in the area, but Athens would be the first municipality to sign up for the service.

Town Clerk/Collector Linda Stacey said that inclement weather sometimes causes problems with the copper-wire system.

At least two phones and the town’s fax machine would be grounded with the old, copper-wire system so that phones would still be operable should Internet service be interrupted.

The service will cost just over $530 a month, which would be an increase over the current system by $150.

Hatton asked the board whether the services were worth paying the extra money.

“The answer to that is yes,” Councilman John Lubera answered without missing a beat.