There’s a new village attorney in town
March 28, 2024 at 2:07 a.m.
After 28 years, there’s a new village attorney at 222 Grace Church St. James Carpiniello began his career with the Village of Port Chester on Mar. 19, having been confirmed and approved by the Board of Trustees at a meeting the night before.
As Village Manager Stuart Rabin’s appointment, Carpiniello only had to be confirmed by the village board.
He will earn $155,000 a year and serve a probationary period of between 12 weeks and one year.
Carpiniello spent 22 years in the Westchester County Law Department, the last seven doing municipal law as senior assistant county attorney in the Contracts & Real Estate Bureau. Previously he was senior assistant county attorney in the Family Court Bureau for three years and before that assistant county attorney in that bureau for 12 years.
In a telephone interview earlier this week, Carpiniello said he liked municipal law and, “when I saw this job posting, I figured it was right up my alley. When I spoke to Stuart, I got the sense of the direction they were bringing Port Chester in, and I thought I would like to be a part of it.”
Since the Port Chester gig is his second career, Carpiniello, 58, joked that he didn’t know if he would last as long as his predecessor, Anthony Cerreto, who retired Feb. 27 after 28 years in the job.
Carpiniello worked for Westchester County a total of 31 years, retiring in April 2022. He started as a police dispatcher and then became a police officer, moving over to the Law Department after he earned his Juris Doctor and Environmental Law Certificate from Pace University School of Law.
After retiring from Westchester County, Carpiniello went into private practice as an attorney. “I wanted to get back into an office,” he said of his desire to apply for the Port Chester position. “I was working from home, and it didn’t agree with me, so I went to where my interests lie and where my experience is, and I found this opportunity to be appealing.”
As far as similarities to his county position, Carpiniello said: “I’ll be doing a lot of contract work here. I did a lot of advising to the Board of Legislators and county departments, and I’ll be doing that here. They would come to me for advice which is a lot of what I am doing now.”
The Port Chester Board of Trustees also has a corporation counsel, currently Peter Sisca, to advise them, something Carpiniello was not familiar with. “I’m still getting used to all the particulars of the village that are different from the county,” he said, “but I’m learning.”
The working environment and fast-paced nature of the new post suit him well. “So far it’s been great,” Carpiniello said after a little more than a week on the job. “The people here have been very welcoming. The work comes at a non-stop pace which is good, makes the time go by fast. I am learning as fast as I can.”
Cerreto is still pitching in, too, attending the Mar. 21 Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, for instance, to provide the board with legal advice on a case where attorney Anthony Tirone argued that the applicant who was seeking an interpretation and review of the zoning compliance certificate issued for the site plan approval application of Neri Land Improvement to construct a storage space at 41 Pearl St. conforms to the Port Chester zoning code did not have standing to do so.
Rabin announced on Mar. 19 that the village will also be hiring a deputy village attorney, a position that was included in the 2023-24 budget. The person who fills that spot will assist Carpiniello as needed but focus on prosecuting village code violations, which former Port Chester Justice Matt Troy is currently doing until the deputy is hired. Troy is also prosecuting vehicle and traffic violations and will continue in that role.
Carpiniello lives in Valhalla with his wife Lisa Denig. They have three grown children—two daughters who live in Colorado and a son in Seattle.
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