A group of eight public officials representing the citizens of Warren, a city in Macomb County just north of Detroit, said in a joint statement Tuesday that they recognized the voice in the recordings to be that of 74-year-old Fouts — an allegation the mayor has vehemently denied.

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“These comments are hateful. They are racist and disparaging of women,” the group of officials said in the statement. “The leader of our State’s third largest city should be a role model for how we treat each other and anyone that harbors these feelings and expresses them is not fit to lead.”

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The group includes U.S. Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.); state Sen. Steve Bieda; state Reps. Henry Yanez, John Chirkun and Patrick Green; and Macomb County Commissioners Andrey Duzyj, Veronica Klinefelt and Marv Sauger.

“We believe that these comments, and the previous comments about people with disabilities, do not represent the people of the City of Warren,” the statement read. “Therefore, we believe that it would be best for the people of Warren for Mayor Fouts to resign, and we call on him to do so.”

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Fouts did not respond to phone and email requests for comment Tuesday.

Throughout Monday and Tuesday, the mayor updated his public Facebook page with lengthy posts ripping into those he claimed had purposely timed their release to coincide with his appearance at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. He accused Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel of manufacturing the “phony, engineered tapes.”

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“Just attended what should have been a joyous occasion for our 4th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ceremony,” Fouts wrote on Facebook around 2:30 p.m. Monday. “Instead Mark Hackel and friends attempted to hijack this ceremony by releasing more vile, vitriolic, phony tapes against me.”

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In the post, Fouts spent several paragraphs outlining efforts he said he had taken to diversify his administration.

“This effort at negative tapes is designed to distract from my efforts of inclusion for all,” he wrote. “The media as usual bombarded me with questions all at once and allowed an agitator to shout over me! This tactic dishonors the memory of Martin Luther King a man of peace.”

On Monday, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said on Twitter that Fouts needed to resign, if that was in fact him on the tapes.

Later Tuesday, at least two more public officials joined the chorus calling for Fouts to resign. Warren’s city treasurer, Lorie Barnwell, who described herself as a friend of Fouts who works down the hall from the mayor, said in a statement the recent events were becoming “an undue distraction and impediment” to the city’s management.

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City councilman Keith Sadowski also released a statement that it was time for new leadership, despite “great strides” the city had made under Fouts.

“I feel that if this air of controversy continues, it will paint Warren in a poor light,” Sadowski wrote.

Fouts has declared he had no intention of stepping down.

“There is tremendous effort to force me out immediately by slander, by character assassination, lies and by out right condemnation of me,” Fouts wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday morning. “I will not resign. I will be here through at least 2019 as the people wanted me to. I will not capitulate to a rush to judgement by those who wish to take over city hall and hijack the 2015 election.”

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While some reacted with outrage, others commented on his posts encouraging him to stay in office.

Fouts was elected mayor of Warren, Mich., in 2007 with 62 percent of the vote, and reelected in 2011 with more than 80 percent of the vote. As of 2010, the city had a population of about 134,000 people; it is Detroit’s largest suburb and home to the General Motors Technical Center.

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Fouts calls himself an independent and the Warren mayor’s office is nonpartisan. A previous version of this story cited the Motor City Muckraker’s reporting that Fouts is a Democrat. The vice chair of the Macomb County Democratic Party later told The Post in an email “Jim Fouts is not and has not been a member of the Democratic Party.”

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Reached by phone Tuesday, Hackel, the Macomb County official Fouts accused of manufacturing the audio, called the allegations “ridiculous.”

“I’m appalled that anyone would even ask me that question,” Hackel told The Washington Post. “That is the most absurd defense I’ve ever heard. For him to even say that, it’s pretty obvious that he’s desperate.”

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The Detroit Free Press reported that the two have been feuding over an issue about a local landfill, but Hackel said Tuesday he did not know why he would have been singled out.

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“I have no idea why he dislikes me,” Hackel said, adding that he felt Fouts “is probably the most difficult public official to work with in Macomb County.”

Joe DiSano, a political consultant who says he advised Fouts from 2003 until 2013, told the Detroit Free Press that the recordings did not surprise him.

“In many meetings, I’ve heard him casually use the n-word,” DiSano told the newspaper. “At one of the last meetings I ever had with him, he actually stood at the front of the conference room table and danced around like he was a monkey. And that was in reference to voters in Detroit.”

This round was not Fouts’s first brush with controversy. Less than a month earlier, Hackel released an audio recording of a man also alleged to be Fouts calling people with special needs “dysfunctional human beings.”

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Hackel told the Detroit News that the audio had been sent to him by a friend of a Warren city employee who recorded it.

“They asked me to pass it along to a news reporter,” Hackel told the news site in December. “After I listened to it, I couldn’t believe [what I heard] so I passed it along. … If I don’t [pass it on], there would be questions of why I was sitting on it.”

Fouts denied the man on that recording was him.

“That tape is a phony tape and has obviously been altered and manipulated with. It’s horrific but it’s not me!” he wrote on Facebook. “I have helped ‘special needs’ persons in a variety of ways.”

Still, after that tape emerged, he was fired from his job as a commentator on a weekly show for 910 AM Radio Superstation, according to the Detroit News.

The first audio recording drew a round of condemnation from the Michigan Democratic Party and U.S. Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) as “despicable” and “vile.”

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This post has been updated.