When the clock strikes midnight Monday night, members of the Lindon police department will start patrolling the community's streets.

"I came up with 170 things I had to get done," Cullimore said Monday. "I have three or four them left."

That includes a public ceremony Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Oak Canyon Jr. High School to swear in the 15 new police officers and present them their badges.

"We sent out 3,000 invitations to the community," Cullimore said. "I don't know how many will actually show up."

Still he is expecting a good turnout as public support for the new police department appears to be strong.

"It took far more work than I ever thought." Cullimore said about getting ready for the July 1 opening date. "I just got lucky. I didn't know how to do it."

Computer techs were installing software early this week, and the city council was expected to sign a final agreement with Orem to handle dispatch duties for the new department Tuesday night.

Several things will happen next Monday night, when police protection is transferred from Pleasant Grove to Lindon.

In addition to Lindon officers patrolling the streets for the first time, dispatching duties will be transferred from Pleasant Grove to Orem.

"Then we'll just see how things go," Cullimore said.

Pleasant Grove Police Chief Tom Paul said the change in dispatching would be problematical, especially for calls that are made from cell phones. 911 calls made through cell phones are routed to police dispatchers according to the location of the towers picking up the signals. Since many towers share Pleasant Grove and Lindon callers, call may be routed to the wrong dispatchers initially.

But that's only a minor glitch, he said.

"We don't really know until the button gets pushed," Paul said. "But we'll just play it by ear."

The new police department has 18 employees, including 15 police officers who have been on staff and training for two weeks. Friday, for example, they were training on mountain bikes, one of the tools the department will use to patrol the community.

Included in those numbers are an administrative assistant, a lieutenant and two sergeants. That is three more officers than originally planned for the new department.

Police offices are located in what was only a few months ago the unfinished basement of the Lindon City Building, and includes an up-to-date evidence rooms and two small holding cells which can be used to confine offenders for short periods of time before they are transported to the Utah County Jail in Spanish Fork.

The department also has 15 new police vehicles painted brown and white with gold trim and sporting a police department logo that includes an image of Dry Canyon drawn by Cullimore.

Paul said the change has reduced the size of Pleasant Grove's police department to 25 from 32 officers, but the ratio of police officers to population will remain the same.

"The concentration of officers in just Pleasant Grove will actually improve," he said. "My biggest concern right now is growth in the Gateway area, but we would have had to deal with that either way. This makes it easier since we don't have to handle Lindon as well."

Paul said the transition "is actually going better than I ever expected."