Napolitano wins Fire Board election

Jerry Napolitano won a seat to the Eastchester Fire Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, unseating one-term incumbent and former town Fire Chief Keith Fennelly. Napolitano cruised to victory in a landslide, winning in every town voting district in an election that saw the highest voter turnout since 2000.

Napolitano, 46, works as a solutions architect in Motorola's government and enterprise division. He has been a regular at Fire Board meetings for he past three years. He took home 1,096 votes, easily trumping Fennelly, who netted 318 votes. Also running was David Levy, a town resident and union iron worker, who received 39 votes.

The Fire Board oversees a Fire District that encompasses Eastchester, Tuckahoe, and Bronxville. Each year, a December election is held for one of the seats on the board and voter turnout is notoriously low. The Fire Board is a taxing entity, setting the budget for the Fire District.

Fire Board meetings have grown quite contentious in recent years, with the common scenario being Commissioner Dennis Winter bumping heads with the rest of the commissioners over the district's accounting and communications practices. Winter supported Napolitano's candidacy in this year's race.

In a recent interview with The Town Report, Napolitano said, “I think there’s a lot of ways to communicate better to the public what the Fire Board is doing and make the public more comfortable with what the Fire Board is doing."

Fire commissioners receive no compensation annually and serve five-year terms.

Read more in this week's edition of The Town Report.