Former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn was appointed by the Tonawanda Town Board Monday evening as the next town supervisor. That's to fill the vacancy left by Supervisor Joe Emminger, a multi-term incumbent who left office more than a year before his final term was to end.
The appointment will be for the remainder of 2026, while a special election will take place in November for Emminger's final year. Flynn has gained the endorsement of the Tonawanda Town Democratic Committee, and town Republicans are searching for a candidate.
Prior to his appointment, Buffalo Toronto Public Media NPR Assistant Managing Editor Ryan Zunner sat down with Flynn for a one-on-one interview, talking about his aspirations for the position, his priorities and his opinion on a controversial AI data center being proposed along River Road.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RYAN ZUNNER, REPORTER: We've chatted before, kind of about this job and your interest in it. But what are some of your hopes and goals now that that tenure, that position, is looking more and more likely for you in Tonawanda?
JOHN FLYNN, GUEST: Well, obviously, I come to this with not only extensive experience and a history within the town of Tonawanda as a former town board member, a former town judge, a former town attorney. So I bring that background with me of knowing town government, knowing the town very well for a number of years, but you couple that with the past eight years of my life, give or take, you know a couple years off here now as a district attorney, so I come to this job with public safety as being first and foremost in my mind.
Tonawanda is an extremely safe place to live. We have no real crime problems, fortunately. But we do have some issues, as a lot of suburban communities do, with stolen cars as a problem. It's been a problem since coming out of Covid. You know, back when I was DA during Covid we obviously had a significant spike in the violent crime in 2020-2021. That violent crime was mainly in [Buffalo], it didn't really extend out to the suburbs, and specifically Tonawanda. But after that kind of leveled off, and actually has gone down now over the course of the past number of years, we saw a significant increase in stolen vehicles all across Western New York, to include Tonawanda.
We are going to have a zero tolerance policy. And by zero tolerance, I mean listen here, everyone knows when I was district attorney, I always tried to give people a second chance, especially young kids. I haven't really changed my mind there. But the problem is when you have repeat offenders, and a lot of these kids when you get into the repeat offender mode, that's when we have to have zero tolerance. So we will obviously be taking a hard look at this. I met with the police chief, and we talked about the problems of stolen vehicles, and we are going to address this situation.
ZUNNER: When I talked to Joe Emminger, when he was stepping down, he really prided himself and saw local government really as that first step that boots on the ground for residents.
You have federal and state issues and agencies and things, but people don't really interact with those as much in their daily lives. Where in local government everything from, it could be your water, it could be your garbage cans, the police services that you use... How do you see local government in the lives of residents?
FLYNN: Local government in reality, Ryan, is the governmental level that deals with the everyday issues of human existence. So you have education, you have public safety, you have recreation, you have all of your utilities, you have all of these functions that deal with transportation.
If you think about it, the federal and state level has pretty much become a two-part function. The first part of state and federal government is 30,000 feet global policy issues. Okay? The second part is a bank, let's be honest, all right? They are the bank. They provide money to various organizations and entities that carry out their 30,000 feet on macro level policies. So, Supervisor Emminger is exactly right. Local government is what, quite frankly, drives the train of government in this country.
ZUNNER: When you talk about some of the unique amenities of the town, one of that is the waterfront. I feel like a lot of people in Western New York forget that the town of Tonawanda has a waterfront, and it's somewhat sizable.
They go to events or parks in the city of Tonawanda or North Tonawanda, but in the town it's sort of a mixture of industry, former industry, a lot of it taken up by roadway. What are your plans for the waterfront? I know Buffalo, over the last many years, has really transformed their waterfront. What do you see for the waterfront in town of Tonawanda?
FLYNN: Well, after public safety, that, quite frankly, is my second priority. If you think about it, and look at this again from a regional standpoint, just like you stated, the city of Buffalo over the course of the past 25 years now almost in certain pockets along the waterfront have done great things. Everyone can agree of the remarkable job that the mayor of North Tonawanda has done with that riverfront there in North Tonawanda. All the restaurants out there, all the bars there that are on the waterfront are bringing people from all over this region to North Tonawanda.
The city of Tonawanda is also doing an excellent job, so you're looking down at the region. You got the city of Buffalo doing things on their waterfront, you got North Tonawanda, the city of Tonawanda doing things on their waterfront. What's right in the middle of that? The town of Tonawanda.
The town of Tonawanda, quite frankly, is the anchor to that whole regional area there, and north is where the action is going to be, because it's going to be a long time before they're going to be able to go south from the city of Buffalo. The Bethlehem Steel Plant, Republic Steel Plant, just has so many environmental issues, they're obviously looking to address that now, that's going to be a while.
So regionally in the near future, let's go from the city of Buffalo and look north up toward the Niagara area. There, town of Tonawanda is right in the middle. We mainly have industrial footprints on our town waterfront. That's going to change, though. We're about to take over the Huntley [Plant]. There's a spot there called the Cherry Farm. We've been looking to get involved with that for years. So, there are a number of pockets on our riverfront in the town of Tonawanda that we're going to focus on over the course of the next few years to build that up and link the city [of Buffalo] and city of Tonawanda, North Tonawanda, and make this a regional attraction to come to.
ZUNNER: And with that being so close to the former Tonawanda Coke site, I know it's very preliminary, but there is a developer that wants to build a data center there. And not just a small data center, 300 megawatts, which is a lot of power. Do you think that's a good idea for that location?
FLYNN: I have to look into it more. Obviously, I'm aware of it. I recognize that with data centers nationwide, there are three main concerns. The first is the use of electricity, and how the tremendous need for electricity there, How does that affect the surrounding areas in the town? The second area is environmentally, obviously we don't mean like dirty air or that kind of thing, we're talking about noise. So that has to be addressed and looked at.
Number three with data centers, is a lot of these companies come in and they build these data centers, and they run them for a couple years, and then they don't make any money, or it doesn't work, and then they leave them. So now you have an abandoned data center in the middle of your town, that obviously cannot happen.
ZUNNER: When you talk about reuse of a site like that, I mean, there is none.
FLYNN: Absolutely, so I mean, when you look at data centers, those are the three concerns that communities have now, preliminarily, and talking to people, but again, this is preliminary, I haven't even taken over a job yet, all right, these three areas seem to be being addressed, it seems like the person you know and the entity that's coming in there recognizes these three areas, and they're going to have to do a job, though, obviously, to assure me and to ensure my constituents that those three areas are being addressed.
