In the Press
[ Back to In the Press ]Lyme Prepares to Relaunch its Website After Long Hiatus
by Jenna Cho, The Day, New London, CT, 5/30/10
Lyme - Residents, meet www.townlyme.org. It's been a while, but she's back and looking better than ever. Eye-catching, with old family photographs, and quite resourceful, too. She'll tell you who you need to call if you have questions about getting a dog tag. She'll have copies of town permits for you to download.
After taking a long hiatus from the World Wide Web, the town of Lyme will relaunch its website on Tuesday. The town was among several towns, including Voluntown and Griswold, that took down their municipal websites in the fall of 2008 after the state began requiring them to post meeting agendas and minutes online.
Voluntown and Griswold have since relaunched their sites. Lyme held out, and First Selectman Ralph Eno sought a repeal of the law last year, arguing that in small towns without staff webmasters, complying with the law put a strain on town finances and employees' time.
"We were going to do it anyway," Eno said Thursday of relaunching the town's website. "There's just too much material, even in a small town, that you don't want to wait for newsletter time. We just decided we were going to bite the bullet."
It was rather serendipitous, then, that the law was repealed just before the town was finished redesigning its site. Public Act 10-171 says towns no longer have to post meeting minutes online to comply with Freedom of Information laws.
The act also relieves towns of the need to pick up and transport evicted tenants' personal possessions, though they are still required to store them for a period of time in case the owner comes back to reclaim them.
Eno said the town can breathe easy knowing "the liability's gone" for the website mandate. "We're still going to post minutes, but now, we're not going to run around like crazy trying to meet deadlines," Eno said.
The new website will include standard information about the town, such as how to contact town officials and employees. It will also have town announcements and downloadable copies of permits and applications that residents can fill out at home before bringing to Town Hall, Selectman Steven Mattson said.
Historic photos from the Lyme Public Hall will add some personal touches to the site, Mattson said. "It's a big improvement to what we've had in the past," Mattson said.
Brown Bear Creative of New London designed the site and will serve as its host, but it'll be up to Eno and Mattson to update it.
"I've got my little instruction sheet on how to do things," Eno said. "Steve's pretty good with computers, and I'm going to learn. It will be good therapy for me."