City council has supported Mayor Rob Ford’s decision to turn down the province’s offer to hire two public health nurses for Toronto at no cost to the city.

Council’s executive committee, chaired by Ford, rejected the nurses last month, and a move to reopen the issue at council Wednesday didn’t go anywhere. It means the executive committee’s decision stands.

Ford didn’t speak to the issue at council but he said earlier he was concerned the city would be on the hook to pay the nurses when the provincial money runs out.

The chair of the board of health, Councillor John Filion, said council has routinely accepted such provincial funding offers in the past. In this case, one of the nurses would have been assigned to work with new immigrants on disease and the other to promote health services in a poor neighbourhood.

“I believe the mayor’s goal is to eliminate government as much as possible,” Filion said. “He’s looking for much, much smaller government. This is ideology run amok.”