Town reviews 2025 audited financial statements

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Town of Strathmore was presented with their annual audited financial statements, April 15, for 2025, indicating a strong and healthy position coming into the new year. 

Presented by Riley Brolly, manager of financial planning, the town received a clean audit, describing positive debt repayment and financial growth. 

“The balance sheet statement of financial position is showing that we are in a pretty strong financial position as of Dec. 31, here. We had a $3.79 million increase in our net financial assets,” said Brolly. “A financial asset position tends to be favourable for a municipality. It means that past events and past revenue and expenses, we can use that to provide services to the residents in the future.”

The inverse, or a net financial debt, would mean the municipality would have to pay for assets and expenditures with future taxation.

Strathmore concluded the 2025 financial year with a $7.5 million surplus of revenue over its expenses. Brolly described this as an exceptional revenue year which was driven by high local development activity, supplementary property tax, wildfire surpluses, and grants. 

“That is not a situation where we are over taxing our residents by $7.5 million. That $7.5 million includes things like contributed tangible capital assets, development receipts … other money going into reserves, things like that,” said Brolly. “A couple notable variances in the year on our expense side were budget amounts for the WHMB (Wheatland Housing Management Board) lodge that was passed by a previous council resolution that has not yet occurred.”

Budget variances occur when monies are outlined in the documentation but are not actually spent. This was also visible as the town overbudgeted last year for snow removal compared to what was actually spent. 

The allocated funds from last year have been transferred to a reserve for future snow events.

Also reallocated to reserves were funds originally budgeted for RCMP contracts due to positions currently not being filled. 

“At December 2025, what we were looking at for reserves, we have $7.3 million in operating. Of that, it is not reflected in the statements, but $4.5 million of that is uncommitted, meaning that it is basically available to use in the future as council sees fit as emergencies come up,” said Brolly. “Similarly with capital, we have $14.6 million in reserves. Of that, $12.8 million is uncommitted. So that is $21.9 million in reserves at December 2025 compared to last year, $16.9 million at Dec. 31, 2024.”

Brolly also noted the town is currently utilizing 26.5 per cent of its debt limits which are set out by the province of Alberta. This equates to $17.2 million as of Dec. 31, 2025. The town’s internal debt policy limits its use to 60 per cent of the provincially established limits. 

The full outline of the audit is publicly available through the town’s April 15 council meeting agenda.