Effort begins to put plan for independent Montville force to a referendum vote
Montville — Town Councilor Kathy Pollard has begun a petition drive that would force a referendum vote on the council's vote last week to create an independent police department.
Pollard, one of two councilors to vote against the motion at last week's meeting, was at Town Hall last Friday morning to pick up the petition forms, according to Town Clerk Lisa Terry.
If Pollard and other residents collect 424 signatures — or 5 percent of the registered voters in town— the council will be required within 20 days to either reverse its decision or hold a public hearing-style town meeting and schedule a public referendum.
The deadline for the signatures is Feb. 12. Petitioners must be registered voters in Montville who pay more than $1,000 in property taxes, according to Pollard.
"It's going very well," Pollard said Monday.
She said Monday that she and a handful of other people spent the weekend collecting names and signatures at nursing homes, the town's transfer station and popular Montville restaurants like the Brown Derby Lounge on Route 32.
The petition has more than 100 signatures so far, she said.
If the Town Council sends the decision to a referendum, the vote will likely happen in early March at a Montville polling station, Terry said.
That vote would come shortly before the Connecticut primary election for presidental candidates, scheduled for April.
"That's doable," Terry said.
Residents and other town councilors have spoken in favor of a townwide vote on the proposal for an independent department.
An effort to establish an independent department with a town-employed chief passed the Town Council in 2002, but was overturned in a townwide referendum later that year.
Terry said her office is working with the town's attorney to determine the wording of a question that would appear on the ballot for a possible referendum.
Some people, she said, have claimed that the question in the 2002 referendum was unclear because a "no" vote — against reversing the Town Council's vote in favor of an independent department — could have been confused with a "yes" vote in favor of reversing the decision.
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