Debra O'Brien, Dorothy Robinson, Margaret O'Connor and John Galletly say they were devastated by the comments made by Mr May.

"There were lists of untrue and dismissive things which we thought were way beyond what his remit is and we wanted to respond to it," Ms O'Brien said.

"Mr May is pushing out a number of false allegations that adds to the idea that we have done something wrong when what we did is stand up to a dodgy administration.

"We were promised if we did the right thing and followed the rules we would have someone to help us and then we would be reinstated.

"Now Mr May has added another three months and is talking about us never going back. That is way beyond what we agreed to.

"He's also smearing us to the community. It can't go unchallenged and it won't go unchallenged."

Ms O'Connor said a copy of the letter was given to Mr May because they wanted it to be on public record as part of the correspondence between them.

"There was nothing about our meetings that was dysfunctional ... but we've held our silence until now because we wanted to give the administrator space to do his job and do the best job he can," she said.

"Whilst we don't mind some kind of inquiry, the costs of the level of inquiry Mr May is asking for can be billed to the council.

"It's an unlimited cost that could be levied against our ratepayers. Mr May has not disclosed that to the community. There is absolutely no way it should be paid for by the ratepayers because it's not their fault. Nor is it our fault - it was visited upon us."

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Debra O'Brien said the main concern was that only one person was making all the decisions instead of the community.

"The community does not know what is going on and they will have to live with these decisions forever," she said.

"And opportunities are being missed as well. Armidale is basically being ripped off by not having a council. The point is you've got one person monopolising the decisions for the community."

Dorothy Robinson said the councillors did the right thing by complaining in private to the Office of Local Government more than a year ago about governance and management issues, but heard nothing except acknowledgements until councillors were suspended.

"Mr May is trying to blame us for the problems that could have been prevented if Minister Hancock's department had acted in a timely manner," she said.

"Now Mr May has deferred all meetings of advisory committees until at least March 2021, probably later, and doesn't want the elected councillors to be returned.

"Who will represent the community?"

The group confirmed the letter was delivered to Mr May late last week and the four councillors would now like to meet with him.

"We'd like to have the opportunity to talk with him and work in a cooperative manner with him," Ms O'Connor said.

"We are not entitled to pay or any other benefits but we are not deprived of our status. We are still elected people and we would like for him to be able to listen to our side in a confidential way rather than just going out in public and denigrating our performance in what we think is a baseless way.

"The chief judge of the land and environment court (who is the judicial legal guardian of the sector) has said we didn't do anything wrong, we were just doing our job.

"We want Mr May to stop denigrating us in public and to undertake sensible and open discussions with us about what went wrong and how it could be fixed which is the basis of why the suspension was originally ordered

"The suspension wasn't ordered on the basis we'd done something dreadful, it was because of the serious governance and management issues that we asked the Office of Local Government to investigate as a serious governance breach over a year ago.

"The Office of Local Government refused to investigate but did not communicate this decision until after the councillors had been suspended, advising us to talk through our concerns with Mr May, which he has refused to do.

"We absolutely deny the notion, and reputational slur, that there was a toxic culture and that all councillors were blameworthy and squabbling like school children.

"The notion that we were in some bitter schoolyard quarrel is a complete invention."

The council was suspended by Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock in June after a breakdown of the relationship between councillors.

In early September, Mr May was given a second three-month appointment to administrate the council.

Four of Armidale's 11 elected councillors have resigned since the council was suspended, including former mayor Simon Murray.