By Kevin Ostrowski
TOWN OF TONAWANDA — For more than a decade, the Town of Tonawanda lived under New York’s 2% property tax cap. Its new supervisor is now asking residents to accept a budget that goes well past it, and to accept the argument behind it.
John J. Flynn, the former Erie County district attorney who was appointed supervisor in May, presented a 2027 tentative budget to the Town Board on Sept. 28 that raises the town tax levy by 3.9%. It is his first budget. The board has until Nov. 5 to review it and make changes, WBEN reported.
The question for residents isn’t only whether 3.9% is too much. It’s whether Mr. Flynn’s theory of budgeting — pay a little more now so you don’t pay a lot more later — holds up, and what the town is buying with the money.
The numbers
The proposal sets the 2027 tax levy, the amount raised from property owners, at $59,337,578. Spending in the budget totals $132,144,903, not counting special assessments and costs that don’t fall on property owners, The Ken-Ton Bee reported. The town expects $65,007,325 in revenue that doesn’t come from property taxes, up 8.2%.
“Based on all that I just mentioned, the 2027 cost per day of town government for the typical homeowner will be $4.95, up $0.62 per day from last year,” Mr. Flynn said, according to the Bee. “The total 2027 town tax for all funds and special districts for the average homeowner living in a home assessed at $50,000 will be $1,808.10.”
The town stayed under the state cap for more than a decade until former Supervisor Joseph Emminger proposed a 2.99% increase in the 2026 budget, the Bee noted. Under state law, a local government that wants to exceed its levy limit must first adopt a local law overriding the cap by a 60% vote of its governing board.
Where the money goes
Mr. Flynn has pointed to costs he says the town can’t control. In an interview with WBEN, he listed them.
“As I mentioned last night in my budget message, our health insurance costs in the Town of Tonawanda are going up 7.5% next year. The state mandates us to pay $11 million next year in the retirement fund for all of our retired employees in Tonawanda,” Mr. Flynn said. “Something as simple as rock salt — which we obviously need next winter to plow our roads and salt our roads — is going up 57%. So these numbers are crazy of what they’re going up.”
Labor is also part of it. Mr. Flynn told WBEN that in his first month he negotiated a new police contract that included a 4% raise, which he said was needed to recruit officers and “get the best to serve and protect our community.”
He argued that a town of Tonawanda’s size can’t realistically stay under 2%. “When you have that many services and that many employees, it’s virtually impossible to keep it below the 2% tax cap. But we’re only at 3.9%,” he said, citing the town’s own police department, water department, treatment plants and two golf courses.
The ‘pay now’ argument
Mr. Flynn has said plainly that he could have stayed under the cap. He chose not to.
“Some may be wondering if I could have gotten it to under the 2% Tax Cap figure; and the short answer is yes,” he said, according to the Bee. “But to do so, in my opinion, would put future town budgets at risk of having much higher tax hikes in the coming years, like some other municipalities in Western New York have seen in recent years.”
He pressed the same point in remarks reported by WNYmedia, citing WIVB. “As a homeowner myself, I’m not thrilled by exceeding the tax cap at 2%, but like I said during my presentation, I think that the tax cap should be the rate of inflation, or 2%, whatever is higher,” Mr. Flynn said.
That argument deserves a test. Neighboring Clarence, a smaller town, faces some of the same pressures. In his budget message, Clarence Supervisor Patrick Casilio said the cost of road salt per ton rose significantly after state requirements that it be purchased from New York mines. “Today, the Town pays more for road salt than for blacktop used to repave our roads,” he wrote. Clarence still stayed under the cap, holding its general fund rate at 57 cents per $1,000 of assessed value while raising its highway rate to 85 cents.
The two towns aren’t the same, and Mr. Flynn has said full services cost more. “You can put anything you want on the curb on your garbage day in Tonawanda, anything — no bulk days,” he told WBEN. “The services we got in Tonawanda are, quite frankly by far, the best in Western New York, and you’ve got to pay for those services.”
New revenue, and open questions
The town is also leaning on revenue beyond the tax bill. Mr. Flynn said advertising revenue from Paddock Park and the Field House is expected to top $250,000 in 2027, and the town’s Ambulance Corps is projected to bring in more than $500,000 this year, the Bee reported. The town also keeps an Aa2 rating from Moody’s.
Budget workshops were scheduled for Oct. 6 and Oct. 8 to review the plan, according to the Bee. The public record so far doesn’t show whether those sessions trimmed the 3.9% figure, whether the board has scheduled or adopted a tax cap override, or how much of the new non-tax revenue is already counted in the levy math. The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking answers to those questions from the supervisor’s office and will update this story with any response.
Residents who want to weigh in still have time: any changes have to come before the board’s Nov. 5 deadline. The tentative budget is posted on the town’s website.
Leave a Reply