Tim O. Mains Papers

Tim O. Mains was born on August 4, 1948, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He received a B.S. in Sociology and World History from Ball State University in 1971, a M.S. in Counseling from SUNY Brockport in 1975, and an M.S. in Educational Administration from Canisius College in 2000. He served as a social studies teacher at Greece Arcadia High School and Greece Athena Middle School from 1971 to 1982 and as a school counselor at Greece Arcadia and Athena High Schools from 1982 until 1995.

In 1985, he was narrowly elected to the Rochester City Council as a Member-at-Large. He was re-elected in 1989, 1993, 1997, and 2001, serving for a total of 20 years. During his tenure on the City Council, he served as chair of the Finance & Law Committee and served on the Jobs & Economic Development Committee and the Public Services & the Arts Committee. His accomplishments included identifying a mistake in the RCSD budget that returned $2 million to taxpayers, supporting economic development projects in Downtown Rochester, and advancing the City of Rochester's Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Ordinance. Mains ran two unsuccessful bids for mayor in 1993 and 2005.

In August 2002, Mains was hired as principal of Rochester City School District School (RCSD) No. 50, , the Helen Barrett Montgomery School (Grades K-5). The City of Rochester Board of Ethics held two public hearings in the fall of 2002 to determine whether this position would constitute a conflict of interest with his position on the city council. In February 2003, the city council passed Local Law No. 4 (Introductory 53), which barred employees and administrators in RCSD from running for city council or mayor. Mains successfully challenged the law in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York in 2003-2004.

Mains campaigned for the position of RCSD Superintendent in 2007. He was promoted to Director of Internal School Operations for RCSD in 2012, served as superintendent for the Jamestown (N.Y.) City School District from 2013 to 2017, and served as superintendent for the Pine Bush (N.Y.) Central School District from 2017 until his death in 2021.

Mains was the first openly gay candidate to be elected to public office in New York State and was the first openly gay member of the Rochester City Council. As a City Councilmember, he advocated for LGBT issues by strengthening the city's anti-discrimination policies and establishing domestic benefits for same-sex partners. He delivered speeches at local Pride events and raised money for AIDS Rochester and ImageOUT: the Rochester Lesbian and Gay Film & Video Festival. He campaigned for gay and progressive candidates in the Rochester area and networked with lesbian and gay elected officials in other cities. Prior to his political career, he served as a board member of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley and as managing editor for the Empty Closet. He married his spouse, David Phillip Gardner, in Canada in 2006.

Mains had a lifelong interest in music and theater, which he incorporated into his political campaigns by composing lyrics to campaign songs set to popular music. In 1990, he performed the roll of Snoopy in Rochester Academy of Performing Arts production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

He died suddenly following a medical emergency on died on December 30, 2021, in the Town of Wallkill, New York.