06/10/2026
Village employees, whether Police, DPW, Village Hall Staff, Fairport Electric and the Departments of Planning and Code Enforcement, are dedicated public servants who work each day to support the Fairport community and provide the best possible experience for those who live, work and visit here. There are strong standards of ethics and conduct to keep employees away from the political fray that can develop. Government employee’s jobs should not balance on who wins an election and the temperature of the election, that is one of the purposes of the civil service process.
In my desire to protect Village employees from politics, in this case, our Police Department, I made an error in judgement and removed a political candidate from a picture that was being used on a political page. I reposted the photo on my personal non-political, non-governmental page, without the candidate and only the Village employees. The post was to thank not only the Police Department, but also the DPW, the Fire Department, Fairport Electric and the Perinton Ambulance Corp for the hundreds of hours of planning and support that was delivered to vendors, attendees and the volunteers of canal days from these organizations before, during and after the event.
The image was removed a short time after it was posted and replaced with a different picture containing no employees. I’m sorry to Candidate Briggs for using her picture of our employees. However, while I admit this error, I stand by our employees who don’t want to be politicized. Government employees should never be used as pawns in political account posts whether in support of them, or critical of them.