Village attorney fulfills his dream

Richard Tedesco

Newly appointed New Hyde Park village attorney Ben Truncale said he knew from an early age that he wanted to be a lawyer.

“It was something I always wanted to do. It was something I had an interest in at a younger age,” Truncale said.

At age 15, he started working as a clerk for a law firm in Mineola, where he grew up. He continued working there part time while he attended Mineola High School and St. John’s University.

Truncale also had a facility for mathematics, so he majored in accounting at St. John’s and worked for KPMG as an accountant for two years after he graduated. But his interest in studying law persisted and he returned to St. John’s for law school and earned his law degree in 1999.

He said he didn’t have a particular interest in municipal law. But he found a job with attorney John Spellman’s law firm in Garden City just after graduating from St. John’s and focused on municipal law and zoning law as part of that firm’s practice.

“I didn’t know what I was going to end up doing. I found John Spellman’s firm. Sometimes you don’t pick your specialty. Sometimes it picks you,” Truncale said.

He credits Spellman and John Gibbons  Jr. as his mentors at the firm. And today he is a partner in Spellman Rice Schure Gibbons McDonough Polezzi and Truncale.

Truncale, 40, served as deputy attorney for the Village of New Hyde Park, working with Spellman who was the prior village attorney, over the past 12 years.

“It’s a seamless transition for everybody. The buck kind of stops here now,” Truncale said.

Truncale was also appointed as village attorney for Stewart Manor on April 1. He has also been deputy attorney for the Village of Mineola, where Spellman serves as village attorney, for the past 13 years. He’s also deputy village prosecutor for Mineola and deputy village attorney for Roslyn. And for the past several years he has served as special counsel to Williston Park, Lynbrook, and Roslyn, handling tax certiorari cases.

He said he enjoys the sense of accomplishment he derives from practicing municipal law, which he sees as an “extremely respectable” form of law practice.

“You’re working day-to-day with officials in the community and hoping to effectuate change,” Truncale said. “The end goal is doing what’s best for the village and its residents. You feel like you’re accomplishing something for the better.”

He said his work representing municipalities on tax certiorari cases has kept him particularly busy over the last several years. As the slow processing of tax appeals to the county have frustrated property owners, Truncale said appeals on village taxes have generally increased. 

“As long as you have attorneys out there who file for tax certs, there’s going to be tax cert work,” Truncale said.

He said the number of tax appeals filed with the Village of Mineola has been diminishing since the village revaluated property there several years ago.

Truncale lives in Malverne with his wife, Teresa and their two sons.

He sings in men and boys choir at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre with his son, Benjamin, and said he is looking forward to his younger son, Jake, joining them in the choir next year.

“The music is a big part of my life,” Truncale said.

In his free time, he said he enjoys playing golf but he particularly enjoys time with his family.

“The most important thing to me in my free time is to spend as much time as I can with my family,” he said.

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