Montville ― Years of back-and-forth debate, cost studies and townwide votes culminated Saturday with a ceremony to celebrate the formation of the town’s first independent police force.

“It’s time to stand on our own two feet,” Mayor Ron McDaniel said last week.

Longtime advocates of moving away from the Resident State Trooper Program say it’s hard to understand why it hasn’t happened sooner. McDaniel said with 27 officers, Montville already has more manpower than many municipal police departments and on par with recently formed departments in East Lyme and Ledyard.

In 2010, residents at referendum approved spending $6.5 million to construct a 17,000-square-foot public safety complex on Route 32. At the time, it seemed to be a clear signal that decades of debate about whether the town should create its own police department were finally over.

But, similar to what occurred in 2002, voters at referendum in 2016 derailed plans and voted to remain in the state police Resident State Trooper Program, in part fearing an explosion of costs.

Meanwhile, the town of Ledyard in 2015 and East Lyme in 2016 moved to independent police forces.

The public safety building in Montville has been occupied with Montville officers since 2013, but there are empty holding cells, rarely used evidence storage and interview spaces and a handful of empty work stations where emergency dispatchers could be fielding calls for police service.

Newly hired Montville Police Chief Wilfred Blanchette III said that later in the day on Saturday, emergency dispatchers hired by the town would start fielding 911 calls typically routed to the state police barracks at Troop E in Montville. Residents will not notice a difference in response to calls for service. What will change, Blanchette said, is the level of control the town has over its 27-member department.

Blanchette is a retired state police sergeant who worked for a time at Troop E in Montville and served as executive director of the Law Enforcement Council of Connecticut.

“We’ll be making decisions based on what we think is in the best interests of the residents of the Town of Montville,” Blanchette said. “That means establishing a good relationship with the people who are part of the fabric of the community.”

Advocates of the changeover had for years argued that an independent police force would provide the town with better control, more predictable costs and perhaps most importantly, a continuity in leadership. Under the resident state trooper program, the town’s mayor is technically the police chief, but the resident trooper assigned by state police runs the day-to-day operations at the department.

Retired Montville Police Lt. Leonard Bunnell, a member of the Town Council, longtime advocate of an independent police force and now a candidate for mayor, retired from the department in 2018.

He said there have been more than two dozen resident troopers assigned to the town during his time there.

“They bring with them different procedures, different philosophies. There’s no consistency and that’s not good for the town,” Bunnell said.

Bunnell chalks up past rejections of a local police force to the spread of misinformation. He said he’s talking to multiple people who thought a “yes” vote on the referendum ballot was a vote for the independent police force. The “yes” vote was in fact a vote to overturn a previous vote by the Town Council.

There were also worries of ballooning costs to the town which Bunnell said have not yet materialized. Exact costs to date were not immediately available.

In addition to Blanchette, the town has hired three emergency dispatchers, added an administrative position and created an impound lot for seized vehicles on town property, McDaniel said.

Bunnell and McDaniel said the opening of Mohegan Sun in the 1990s seemed to be another turning point because it led to an increase in calls for service and hiring of additional officers.

Retired Montville Police Lt. Dennis Monahan, 79, said the idea of a locally controlled police force actually dates back to 1971, when former First Selectman Robert Parkhurst had plans drawn up for a police department in a town-owned building near Town Hall. Monahan said those plans dissolved when former First Selectman Howard Beetham took over. Beetham, he said, has been a longtime critic of the change to a town-run force.

Monahan worked at the department from 1968 to his retirement as a lieutenant in 1996. He expects the changeover will boost morale at the department.

“We needed our own police department long ago,” Monahan said. “This has been a political football or I think it would have been done a lot sooner.”

East Lyme Police Chief Michael Finkelstein, the mayor in Ledyard when that town created its police force and now East Lyme’s first police chief, said the Resident State Trooper Program was never meant for towns the size of places like Ledyard, East Lyme or Montville.

“Towns outgrew what the system was intended to provide,“ Finkelstein said. ”I think state police recognize that as well.“

State Police Spokesperson Sgt. Christine Jeltema said the transition has been smooth so far and Troop E will continue to assist in the transition, provide mutual aid and help out when needed.

g.smith@theday.com