AUBURN — The city can rebuild its fund balances back to levels it needs by 2018, councilors were told Monday.

Finance Director Jill Eastman said that not using fund balances to lower property taxes for the next two years will let the city add $825,000 to the fund balance each year for the next two fiscal years.

“That brings our fund balance to $6 million next year,” she said. “Then we do it again in fiscal year 2017, and by fiscal year 2018 we should be at 12.5 percent.”

Auburn’s budget policy calls for the city to maintain about 12.5 percent of its annual expenditures in an unassigned fund balance. It’s enough money to run the city for about a month and a half.

The city has more than $8 million in its fund balance, about 10.2 percent of annual expenditures. But that includes assigned money — reserved for budgeted items but not actually spent or workers’ comp insurance, for example — and unassigned money. For the 2015 fiscal year, the unassigned balance is $4.97 million. That’s about 6.3 percent of the annual expenditures, and the city would need to bank about $3.5 million to get it built back up.

Councilors agreed with Eastman’s suggestions, adopting an ordinance saying they would not rely on fund balances to balance the budget for the next two years.

Last year, the council used $1.65 million from the fund balance to lower the tax rate. Not using anything from the fund balances this year could add 82 cents to the tax rate, she said. That could mean a tax bill of $123 more on a $150,000 home.

Councilor Grady Burns cautioned that the decision could make for tough decisions later this spring when the council adopts its budget for 2016-17.

Councilor Leroy Walker said the problem is serious, but it’s not too bad.

“It’s not like this is a disaster here,” Walker said. “We’re not closing up City Hall. The city is not going away and we don’t have to join with another city tomorrow. We will get where we need to be in a couple of years and everybody can calm down.”

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