Watson turns down Ford's 'strange' offer to help find cuts

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watsonhas no interest in taking Ontario Premier Doug Ford up on his offer to have an auditorcomb the city's books to findsavings, he said Wednesday.

"I'm not prepared to accept someone coming in to do a line-by-line [audit]while, at the same time, they've already prejudged how much is going to be cut," Watson told reporters.

On Tuesday, Fordtold municipalitieshis government would pay for third-party reviews and find the same degree of savings as his Progressive Conservatives are seekingin Ontario's finances: four per cent.

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Four per cent of the City of Ottawa's $3.6-billion annual operating budget would mean trimmingsome $150 million, and Watson said he knows what thatwould require.

"Significant cuts in services and laying off people, plain and simple. Because the bulk of our budget obviously is labour costs."

A 'strange' offer

Watson said he found Ford's offer "strange" because thecity's books are open and audited every year. Municipalities in Ontario are the only level of government forbidden from running a deficit the only level of government held to such a standardso the cityhas already worked to find efficiencies in order to keep tax increases capped, Watson said.

These are not frills.- Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson

Council increased property taxes by threeper cent in March 2019, compared to 2per cent the year before, in part because itwasconcerned about what might come from theFord government's first spending plan, Watson said.

That provincial budgettabled in April hasvexedmunicipalities across Ontario with cuts to important services cuts thecities are only learning about little by little, and only after their own annual budgets have been set.

"If they want to develop a good partnership, the way to do that is not to go and constantly blindside us with these cuts to basic services, whether it's health care or paramedic service," Watson said.

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Watson said despite the province making thecity's finances "tipsy turvy," he will try to keep taxes capped at threeper cent for 2020.

The city treasurer is tallying up the impact the Ontario budget will have on the City of Ottawa, andWatson saidit might mean $2 million less for paramedics and possibly $6 million less for public health.

"These are not frills," Watson said.

In fact, the city has beensteadily hiring paramedics over the past few years, and Ottawa is only now managingto catch up and meet its legislated standard for ambulanceresponse times, said Anthony Di Monte, general manager of emergency and protective services.

The city still plansto hire 14 paramedics in 2019 even though the province hasfrozen its half of the money for it, Di Monte added.