Gerry Friedel is no stranger to gaslighting. During his 18 months in office, Friedel has engaged in gaslighting on issues ranging from the reason he ordered the press table removed from the council chambers to the reason the River of Time Museum is facing eviction. But during the May 5, 2026, Town Council meeting Friedel reached a new low when he publicly denied making a statement residents can still read on the pages of the Fountain Hills Times Independent and which he affirmed as true while testifying under oath.
During the Call to the Public at the May 5 meeting, a resident expressed her disappointment in Friedel’s veracity, citing as an example his false claim that meetings he held with MCSO Sheriff Gerry Sheridan resulted in a 6 percent savings to taxpayers.
In response Friedel said that he never claimed that his meetings with Sheridan resulted in the reduction in the contract price. According to Friedel’s recently articulated alternate facts, the Town issued a press release and “All we reported was that as the result of what he told us in the meeting, the town received a 6.01 percent reduction in the sheriff’s contract.” Friedel went on to admonish the resident by saying you “[s]hould really have the facts straight before you accuse.”
The resident did have her facts straight and it is Friedel who is distorting the facts.
The February 6, 2025, press release Friedel referred to included the following statement attributed to him:
“I am pleased to announce that the MCSO contract for Fountain Hills residents will go down roughly 6%!” said Mayor Gerry Friedel. “A short time after being sworn in, Sheriff Jerry Sheridan and I met. I expressed the concerns I had with the contract and to say he listened would be an understatement!”
Friedel’s statement in the press release was designed and intended to lead residents to believe that after he expressed his concerns about the cost of the services being provided by MCSO, Sheridan agreed to a 6 percent reduction in those costs.
However, in a subsequent letter to the editor of the Fountain Hills Times, Friedel went further by taking direct credit for the reduction as follows: “My meetings with Sheriff Jerry Sheridan resulted in year-over-year savings of 6 percent, or approximately $370,000. The new contract is the first MCSO contract savings in decades.”
That claim was proven to be a lie when correspondence from the MCSO, produced in response to a records request, established that the 6 percent reduction in the cost of MCSO’s services was unrelated to any meeting he held with Sheridan, but the result of an automatic adjustment attributable to reduced personnel costs.
Friedel’s recent assertion that he did not take personal credit for the “new contract” with MCSO is also inconsistent with testimony he provided under oath last year.
When asked if the statement that his meetings with Jerry Sheridan resulted in year-over-year savings of 6 percent was true, Friedel replied “Yes.” Friedel went on to testify that he had two meetings with Sheridan and it was the second meeting, held on January 16, 2025, that resulted in the 6 percent savings.
Friedel is operating under the belief that he can lie to residents with impunity. During a public, recorded meeting while sitting behind his “Mayor” plaque, Friedel denied ever making a statement that is indelibly recorded in a letter published under his name in the Fountain Hills Times. He denied making a statement that he swore, under penalty of perjury, was true.
Friedel’s confidence that no consequences will flow from his deliberate deceptions is understandable. Friedel’s lies will never be revealed to the thousands of residents who get their information from private social media pages, where members are screened based on their political party affiliations and banned if they say anything to contradict or question him.
Filing a formal ethics complaint based on Friedel’s most recent lie is not an option. Last year, his false claim that his meeting with Sheridan resulted in a “new contract” was the subject of a formal ethics complaint. Following an initial review by Town Attorney Aaron Arnson, that ethics complaint was found to have merit and referred to outside council for review. Friedel and his supporters on the council responded by illegally dismissing the pending ethics complaint and deleting the provisions empowering residents to file ethics complaints from the Rules of Procedure.
Friedel will not be held accountable for the lies he tells in private meetings, online or from the dais. The only hope we have of restoring integrity to our town government is to take away the ROT majority’s control by electing candidates who respect the public’s right to be told the truth.
