Fairfield File

The town spending package of roughly $272.5 million that First Selectmen Michael Tetreau unveiled Thursday night can be inspected in detail HERE, as posted on the town’s website, www.fairfieldct.org.

As proposed, the overall budget has a spending increase of about 4 percent over the current fiscal year’s budget of nearly $264 million.

The budget now faces a months-long review and approval process by the Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance and Representative Town Meeting. The spending package and tax rate eventually adopted will take effect with the start of the 2012-13 fiscal year on July 1.

First Selectman Michael Tetreau so far has kept a tight lid on his recommended budget for 2012-13.

The wraps come off that recommended spending package tonight (Thursday, Feb. 16) at a joint meeting of the Boards of Selectmen and Finance. The session gets under way at 7 p.m. in the Board of Education administrative offices, 501 Kings Highway East.

The Board of Education has already endorsed a budget of nearly $150 million. Tetreau will incorporate his recommendation on school spending as well as townside expenditures when he unveils his first budget proposal since being elected first selectman last year.

Fairfield’s budget for the current fiscal year is roughly $264 million.

“Help Wanted.” The sign’s out at Fairfield’s Town Hall.

In addition to a new tax collector, a post that will become open next month when Stanley Gorzelany steps down from the job that he’s held for nearly two decades, the town is looking to fill two other fiscally rewarding positions.

They are: risk/human relations manager with a salary range from $68,000 to $87,000, and a “buyer” to help handle bids and quotes with a $46,000 to $55,000 wage scale.

Check out details of these municipal employment opportunities HERE.

Because of the threat of snow Saturday — anywhere from 2 to 4 inches, according to the National Weather Service — all of Fairfield’s public school buildings will be closed.

Any activities planned in the schools, both day and nighttime, have been cancelled, school officials said in a Friday afternoon announcement.

Training for Fairfield’s Community Emergency Response Team will begin next month, sponsored by the Office of Emergency Management and the Fairfield Citizen Corps Council.

The team is a program of the Citizen Corps, supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the state Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. Training focuses on disaster preparedness and emergency response skills, as well as special training to aid in sheltering in order to support local emergency responders with disaster relief and community safety.

In the past, the Fairfield CERT staffed the evacuation shelter at Fairfield Ludlowe High School when residents were evacuated from their homes due to a tanker truck fire on Interstate 95, and again after a fire at a local condominium complex. Most recently, they were called to manage a shelter for people and pets at Ludlowe following Tropical Storm Irene and the October snowstorm last year.

Classes include disaster preparedness, fire safety, disaster medical operations, light search and rescue, CERT organization, disaster psychology, terrorism and pet sheltering.

The training begins March 3 and all classes are held Saturday mornings at the Fire Training Center on One Rod Highway. Graduates will be given a certificate, and those who join the CERT team will be issued CERT identification and a backpack with basic team equipment.

Class size is limited and team members must be 18 years old and over.

For more information and registration forms, contact Norma Peterson, coordinator, at citizencorps@optonline.net or 203-255-3554. Registration forms are also available at Fire Department headquarters, 140 Reef Road.

If this warm weather keeps up they might have to change the name from “Freezin’ for a Reason” to “Sweatin’ for Nettin’ ” … netting, as in taking in some cash. Which, in this case, is for a good cause.

OK, that’s not the smoothest of rhymes, but with temperatures regularly rising above the 50-degree mark hereabouts this winter, the moniker for the Feb. 11 fund-raising polar plunge planned by the Wakeman Boys & Girls Club may well have to be changed.

Whatever they call it, and whatever the weather, the club’s fundraiser is scheduled to get under way at 1 p.m. that day at Jennings Beach.

Participants will take the plunge into Long Island Sound to raise money by collecting pledges from family and friends. Money raised by the swimmers will support more than 100 programs that take place annually at Wakeman’s Southport and Stratfield clubhouses, as well as the new Smilow-Burroughs Clubhouse in Bridgeport.

Prizes will be awarded to top fundraisers in various categories, and participants will be invited to a post-plunge party immediately following the event. In order to plunge and attend the post-plunge party, adults are asked to raise a minimum of $200 and children a minimum of $100.

To learn more or sign up, visit www.firstgiving.com/wakeman/freezin or call Wakeman’s Development Office at 203-908-3378.

The start of baseball spring training is a couple of weeks away, but two key figures in the game’s greatest rivalry are on deck next week in Fairfield.

A “Conversation with Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein” will take place at Sacred Heart University on Tuesday, Jan. 31, in the school’s Edgerton Center, 5151 Park Ave. The program, sponsored by SHU’s Student Affairs Lecture Series, will start at 7 p.m.

Cashman, New York Yankees’ senior vice president and general manager, and Epstein. former Boston Red Sox general manager and now the president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, will present an evening of “hot stove talk” as they discuss baseball, their jobs and the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.

The program will be moderated by Steve Berthiaume, host of ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight.”

Tickets cost $35 for the general public; $25, university faculty and staff and part-time and graduate students, and $15, full-time undergraduate students. Tickets may be purchased at www.sacredheart.edu or at the box office from noon to 4 p.m.

Call 203-371-7908 for information.

It’s not exactly a Titanic undertaking, but challenging nonetheless.

Entries are being accepted through Jan. 30 in the Fairfield Public Library’s “Voices of the Past” writing contest, part of the annual “One Book, One Town” community reading project.

The library is accepting entries of original prose or poetry of no more than 300 words on the theme “Voices from the Past.”

The theme stems from this year’s theme book for the program, Allan Wolf’s “The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic.”

Winners will be announced March 1 and invited to a reception with Wolf, who will at a program set for March 26 at Fairfield University. The contest’s best works will be published in a digital book created by the library.

Rules are:

• All entries must be Word documents, doubled spaced and not more than 300 words.

• All entries must be submitted electronically; No hard copies will be accepted.

• Each entry must contain the author’s name, phone number and email address.

• Each participant must have a library card that is registered in Fairfield.

• Previously published entries will not be accepted.

• Entries must be emailed to: kronald@fplct.org.

• Submissions are due before Jan. 31.

For information, call 203-256-3155 or check www.fairfieldpubliclibrary.org