A bid for $1 million in loans to build two playgrounds has been approved by Wangaratta councillors.
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The application for two loans of $500,000 each will be made through the Victorian government's low-interest community infrastructure loans scheme.
If successful they will help to fund what the council has described as "play spaces" in projects worth $1.5 million at Apex Park and $1.025 million at Mitchell Avenue Reserve.
The council's community wellbeing director Jaime Chubb said the projects could also attract tourists to Wangaratta.
"These are two really exciting projects for council," she said.
"They will develop two very different spaces in Wangaratta that will attract a wide variety of people and target young people and children of all ages."
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Councillors voted for the loans 6-1, but not before the public at this week's council meeting were vocal in asking why money had not been spent on keeping the Yarrunga pool open.
"The reality is that pools are incredibly expensive to build and to run and to maintain," Ms Chubb said.
"It is a challenge in terms of balancing what the community would like to see and the reality of the cost of developing those kinds of infrastructure."
Mayor Dean Rees also backed having a variety of projects other than pools.
"We are investing more dollars in the splash park. It is being retrofitted to ensure that it is more safe," he said.
"That splash park gets more patronage than what the (Yarrunga) pool ever did by three, four, five, ten-fold. It goes to show that the splash park works and the pool didn't."
He said the community infrastructure loans scheme was a positive initiative that would allow councils to get projects finished years earlier than they otherwise could.
"To do these extra bits of work over years in a staged development would end up costing the council a lot more," he said.
Cr Ken Clarke was the only councillor to vote against the project, saying he did not like the council getting involved in the loans scheme.