The town of Fort Frances is looking at spending more than $29 million in its 2025 capital budget.

Almost half of the revenue would come from reserve accounts.

That has some members of council worried.

Councillor Wendy Brunetta says the drawdown of the water and sewer account for infrastructure upgrades is concerning.

“We are really depleting our reserves, and I’m concerned about what may be coming in the future,” says Brunetta.

“I don’t know if that means we need to increase our water and sewer rates more to try and start rebuilding our reserves. Those are the things that keep me up at night.”

Treasurer Dawn Galusha says while some funds are lower than where they would like them to be, their reserves are still about what they were five years ago.

“I really looked back at a number of years. We are about where we were in ‘2020, 2019. And if you look back over those years, the biggest growth is in the water and sewer reserve section,” says Galusha.

“We know we have these big projects under water and sewer, which is what we had planned for. So, I’m fairly comfortable with where we’re at.”

Galusha says there are plans to amp up accounts in subsequent budget years, such as those used for the purchase of vehicles and equipment and a corporate account tapped for many purposes, including emergency expenses.

Galusha notes that with strong reserve funds, the town has avoided the need to borrow money for some time.

“We have no debt funding in our operating budget. We don’t owe anybody, so all of those things are really good. And if we ever needed to into the future, we could do a flop where we start incurring debt instead of having the mass amount in reserves. I like having money in the bank as opposed to debt.”