CORTLAND Earlier in the week, 21 News reported on a heated council meeting in Cortland where residents voiced concerns with the city's administration, particularly the hiring of Interim Service Director Sean Ratican as an independent contractor.

"If the mayor was here, I would tell her directly, there isn't one employee in the city besides Jieng and Ratican that wanna work with her or under her because of this preferential treatment these two guys have gotten," a resident named Gerald Bayus said. "Employees have been bullied not to speak, employees have been threatened not to come to council meetings," he said.

A response from council woman Kathy Fleischer during the meeting agreed with Bayus' claims.

"We have been threatened like you said, many times and it was not only in that meeting," Fleischer said. Bayus came back with, "So council's being threatened, OK? I said that! Everybody in the city's been threatened!" Fleischer responded, "Yup!"

Now, Cortland Mayor Deidre Petrosky has responded to some of the comments made at that meeting.

A proposed emergency ordinance that would have established an agreement with Ratican's company Lake Shore Strategic Contracting was originally tabled at the start of the meeting because Mayor Petrosky was not there.

By the end of the meeting, the matter was put back on the table and voted down.

Mayor Petrosky says she respects residents' rights to engage with members of their government and question them, but says the allegations made at the meeting are "without merit" and "not supported by fact."

Bayus called on Mayor Petrosky to resign, calling her a "bully."

"For lying to and deceiving the public, for lying to and deceiving council, for conspiring with the law director to undermine Council's authority in order to funnel money to Ratican without Council's knowledge or approval as laid out in the city charter, for acknowledging publicly 'I'm not working with Council any further' and literally for being a bully, the mayor should resign," Bayus said.

There was no direct response to bullying in Petrosky's letter.

In her statement, Petrosky fired back at Bayus, stating that he has a documented history of filing "frivolous complaints" and "pursuing personal grievances through the court system at taxpayer expense."

"These include appeals over minor traffic infractions, challenges to standard legal procedures and repeated lawsuits against public servants and institutions. While individuals are entitled to due process, using that process as a political weapon is not leadership - it's obstruction," Petrosky said.

Petrosky went on to address Bayus's claim about Ratican's hiring process, listing several ordinances passed by Council involving agreements with Ratican and his company. Those ordinances are listed in the mayor's full statement in the PDF below.

"According to the city's charter, the mayor is responsible for the city's day-to-day operations; Council's role is legislative, not managerial. The administrative hires were made transparently and within the legal authority granted by our charter," Petrosky said.

Petrosky's full statement can be read in the PDF below.