Baltimore’s latest phone bill: $415,000

Bills keep rolling in for the costly and outdated phone system used by Baltimore government workers.

The city’s spending board approved another $408,000 expenditure last week as officials continue to phase out the old system. Officials agreed in March to pay $5 million for more modern service, but it’s not yet in place.

Millennium Technologies will receive $34,000 a month to pay technicians over the next year to make repairs, swap out equipment and otherwise maintain the old system.

Another $7,000 will go toward equipment.

The expenditures come about a month after the Board of Estimates agreed to pay Verizon up to $2.4 million to use the company’s Centrex service to make and

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receive phone calls for six months before the new system is operational.

The faster the new system is built, the less the city will pay Verizon.

Meanwhile, Arrow Systems Integration is being paid $5 million to provide equipment and service for about 7,000 phone lines that will have caller ID, video conferencing and an ability to forward calls to mobile phones, plus other modern features. The contract covers costs for equipment and maintenance for three years.

That contract put an end to a nearly four-year dispute between Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt over the municipal telephone system.

Officials said the new service, using Voice Over Internet Protocol, will save the city a projected $25 million over the next decade, after factoring in the cost of the new equipment.

Rawlings-Blake and Pratt disagreed on how best to overhaul the antiquated phone lines, which are a series of copper wires, fiber optics and wireless services cobbled together in a legacy system. The dispute resulted in an inspector general’s investigation, a court battle and an ethics complaint.

Deputies said the mayor and comptroller worked closely for months to reach the deal. The comptroller’s office has controlled city phones since the 1940s.

A better phone system will allow city workers to be more responsive to the public at a long-term cost savings, officials have said.