Montville — The town is moving ahead on a contract with San Francisco-based Tanko Lighting to replace its more than 1,700 streetlights with LED fixtures.

The Town Council unanimously approved the contract, which Mayor Ronald McDaniel said will cost the town about $300,000 after rebates from Eversource but save money in the long term on electricity costs.

Several area towns and cities, including New London, have hired Tanko to replace their streetlight fixtures with LED lights, which the company calls more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than traditional lights.

The new fixtures also can be adjusted to bring more light to dark streets or dim unnecessarily bright areas, said Town Council member Chuck Longton, who is chairman of the Finance Committee that endorsed Montville’s contract with Tanko.

“People who have questions about what that kind of lighting would be like, I highly encourage that you take the trip (to New London),” Longton said at Monday’s Town Council meeting. “It’s going to make the streets safer, things will be easier to see.”

Tanko was chosen by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities as a company qualified to convert streetlights to accommodate LED lights. The company has done work in about a dozen cities and towns in Connecticut.

Under the contract approved Monday, the town would enter a lease-purchase agreement with Tanko for the lights during installation and will own the lights once the project is completed.

The town already owns its streetlights, unlike other towns that lease them from Eversource, significantly reducing the cost of the project, McDaniel said.

LED streetlights emit the same brightness as the existing lights, but give off a glow that is more white than traditional yellow-tinted lights.

With the contract approved, Tanko will first conduct an audit of the town’s light fixtures, which will take about two months.

Installation then will take another five or six months, McDaniel said.

Information about the lights also can be incorporated into the town’s geographic information system maps, and could later be outfitted with Wi-Fi connections or a dimming feature that would keep the lights down while traffic is low and turn brighter when a car or pedestrian approaches, he added.

Editors note: This story corrects the number of street lights in Montville.  

m.shanahan@theday.com