“Come on down, baby!”

That was Councillor Paula Fletcher’s heated response to a taunt from the audience during budget talks at City Hall earlier this week suggesting she should be fired. The politician called on the heckler to run against her.

The barb came after Fletcher's angry outburst at City Hall Monday evening, in which she lashed out at a citizen who stepped up to the mic to offer a deputation on the city’s budget plan. She has since issued an apology.

Budget chief Shelley Carroll, who attempted to rein in Fletcher Monday, read the statement of apology at the start of proceedings the next day.

The representative for Ward 30 (Toronto-Danforth) peppered John Smith with a series of questions, asking him whether he believed the city should cut down funding for arts, daycare and school breakfast programs.

 “I don’t look upon all of these needs as being something that should be funded by taxes,” he said, adding he’s involved in private organizations that provide breakfast programs in schools. The man was there to voice concerns about proposed property tax and user fee increases.

“Are you aware the food in the schools is funded 12 per cent from the city, 12 per cent from the province and the rest of it by the community?” Fletcher countered.

“I’m not aware of those precise percentages, no,” Smith said.

“And would you suggest we cut our 12 per cent?” Fletcher asked.

That’s when the exchange heated up. Fletcher asked Smith if he believed the city should cut transit initiatives -- asserting he drove to the event.

Smith pointed out that he had walked to the meeting.

Fletcher then angrily suggested Smith and others in the audience were being egged on by talk radio host and former Progressive Conservative leader John Tory, who was broadcasting a program from the rotunda at City Hall that evening.

“Is that your suggestion?," she said in regard to her transit cuts comment. "Called down here tonight by the John Tory show?” Fletcher screamed.

Tory urged members of the public to take part in the budget process on his show.

“It is extremely important to have citizens involved in civic affairs and I have always valued citizens’ participation in civic government,” Fletcher said in her written apology read Tuesday.

She apologized to citizens at Monday’s meeting if they though her “tone was argumentative, or if they believe I do not value their participation in the budget process.”