The Daily Five: Bike Versus Car, Health and Safety, and East Lyme's Big Town Meeting

1. Today will be sunny and clear with a high of 56 degrees and an overnight low of 39 degrees, according to Weather.com.

2. The big event in East Lyme tonight is the Annual Town Meeting, which will be held at East Lyme High School Auditorium at 7 p.m. to review and discuss the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2013, as recommended by the board of finance. Town residents will also be asked to adopt a five year capital plan for the town.

The referendum on the budget will be set at the town meeting, to be held May 23 from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the East Lyme Community Center. This will be a machine vote. 

3. Aside from a few cases of road rash, hundreds of cyclists safely navigated the Tour De Lyme on Saturday without injury. The same could not be said for a cyclist in Old Lyme last week, however. A man riding his bicycle on the dedicated shoulder of Shore Road was heading west when a car turning left from Shore Road onto Old Shore Road drove onto the shoulder to go around a parked car, making contact with the bicycle. The cyclist sustained minor injuries and was taken to Shoreline Clinic in Essex by Old Lyme Ambulance. The driver of the vehicle, who was uninjured, was issued an infraction for passing on the right. 

4. East Lyme's land records are now available online. The service is provided by the town's land records system, which will allow you to access records at www.uslandrecords.com. Choose Connecticut in the state list, and East Lyme from the city/town list. 

The records go back to May 6, 1997. You can look at the index for free but if you want to view a document in its entirety, it'll cost you $2 a page to look at it. So, as handy as it is, you might be better off going to East Lyme Town Hall, where you can look at the entire document for free and pay $1 a page to make a copy. 

5. Old Lyme was recently honored by the Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency (CIRMA) for "reemphasizing its commitment to risk management." So what does that mean, exactly? 

Under the leadership of First Selectwoman Bonnie Reemsnyder, the Town's Employee Safety Committee was reestablished. It, in turn, looked to reduce the risk of injury to all town employees, including seasonal workers, and  the town set about formalizing employee safety training programs.

CIRMA was established as a service program of Connecticut Conference of Municipalities in 1980 in response to the municipal insurance crisis of the time.

Ensuring employee safety remains a big concern for local towns. In fact, the Town of East Lyme’s Health and Safety Committee is inviting all neighboring towns and residents to its annual Health and Safety Fair on Friday, May 17 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the new field services building at 8 Capitol Drive in Niantic.

Admission is free and there will be lots of fun demonstrations and presentations on everything from K-9 training to healthy lifestyle habits. There will also be a special ceremony to officially dedicate the new building to the town's much missed and long-serving Public Works Director Mike Giannattasio, who passed away in October, 2012.