Denver residents who dial 311 for help with potholes, trash pickup, or other city services may soon hear an AI voice before they ever reach a human. A contract amendment now before Denver City Council would add an AI voicebot to the city's 311 call line, letting the bot try to resolve a caller's question before transferring them to a live agent.
The proposal is part of a contract amendment that would add $3,889,784.94 to Denver's existing agreement with Citibot Inc., according to Denver Legistar records. That would bring the total contract value to $4,339,784.94 and extend the service term five years, through October 1, 2031. As 9News reports, the city's existing Citibot contract is currently valued at $450,000, and the voice bot is listed in the contract paperwork as an optional add-on that Denver can purchase later with written notice, avoiding another procurement process.
Laura Dunwoody, director of resident experience for Denver's Technology Services department, said the city hopes to eventually launch the voice bot citywide. Per the same 9News report, Dunwoody said the city wants to launch a voice bot for the entire city in 2027, though Denver has not secured full funding for that citywide rollout. A proof of concept using the Community Planning and Development call center queues is planned for 2026, the outlet notes.
How the Voicebot Would Work
According to the 9News report, the AI voicebot would introduce itself as a bot and answer questions using information pulled from Denvergov.org and other city-provided material, without connecting to the wider internet. Callers who say the words human, live agent, or a person would be transferred immediately, and the bot would not answer 911 calls — Denver says it will tell those callers to hang up and dial 911 for emergencies instead.
Citibot prices the voice service at $550,000 per year for 1 million minutes of calls, with costs projected to rise to about $634,000 per year by the contract's final year, the same report states. Voice service accounts for about $2.9 million of the total amount being added to the contract over five years. Denver's own request form estimates the voice bot could save the city $2 million per year, while questions the bot cannot answer would be transferred to a live agent in the appropriate city agency.
Part of a Broader Automation Push
The voicebot proposal builds on Denver's existing chatbot, Sunny, which the city says has achieved an 80% to 95% satisfaction rate, per 9News. Denver already reduced its live 311 call center operating hours in October 2025 and began actively directing callers toward Sunny for municipal help, as reported by CBS News Colorado. The city's web-based chatbot supports text and chat in up to 72 languages and is constrained to a closed knowledge base drawn from Denvergov.org to avoid false responses, according to Citibot.
Denver's push for automated constituent services earned the city a 2025 CIO 100 Award and an “AI 50” distinction from the Center for Public Sector AI for its deployment of Sunny, which the vendor says significantly lowered 311 hold times. Citibot's tools are used by more than 180 local governments and 311 call centers nationwide, including Kansas City and New Orleans, and the company estimates that municipal AI voice software can deflect roughly 65% of routine inbound calls, saving an average of $5 per resident interaction.
Denver's 311 call takers currently answer simple questions roughly 30 times a day, per the 9News report, and the city does not collect or retain callers' demographic information beyond name, address, and contact details. The city says it plans to support self-service for residents, while acknowledging it has many 311 callers who are less technically savvy — a concern reflected in the bot's design to transfer calls immediately when a caller asks for a human. Officials describe the voicebot as conversational and say it will not sound like earlier versions of the technology.
Council Scrutiny Ahead
The contract amendment was submitted by Denver's Technology Services department and passed by consent in the City Council's Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee on September 22, 2026, according to Denver Legistar records. The full City Council has not yet voted on the amendment.
The vote comes amid growing council skepticism toward multi-year vendor deals that stretch past five years without competitive re-bidding. In August 2026, Denver City Council rejected a proposed $600,000 contract extension for a video vendor after it drew concern because it would extend the overall agreement to eight years, beyond a policy that seeks to limit contracts to three to five years; agreements longer than five years are not expressly prohibited and may be approved with justification, as reported by The Denver Gazette. The Citibot amendment itself proposes a five-year extension through 2031, a structure that may draw similar questions when it reaches the full council.
The 311 voicebot proposal also follows Denver's February 2026 move to advance a separate five-year, $4.6 million contract with ComplyAI Inc. to deploy an AI permitting platform called CivCheck for building permit intake, the Denver Gazette reported — part of what city records describe as a broader citywide effort to automate municipal services beyond just phone calls.
Denver has leaned on AI tools before, having promoted texting Sunny at 439311 as a non-emergency option during city hall holiday closures back in January 2025. Whether the full council embraces the latest expansion, or pushes back as it did on the video vendor extension, will determine how soon Denver residents start hearing from a robot before a human picks up the phone.
