Orlando Voters Set Water Rate Increase to Begin January 2027

The Orlando City Council placed a referendum on the November 2026 ballot that would authorize a phased adjustment to water and sewer rates for all customers served by the city's utility department, which covers more than 200,000 residential accounts inside city limits and parts of unincorporated Orange County.

The measure comes forward now because current rate structures have remained unchanged since the last adjustment approved in 2019, while the city's capital improvement plan for 2026 through 2030 projects $412 million in needed upgrades to aging treatment plants and distribution lines, according to the adopted budget document released in September 2025.

For local residents the change would appear first as a higher fixed service charge on monthly statements, with an average single-family home seeing an estimated increase phased in over two years rather than all at once, affecting household budgets alongside existing costs for electricity and property taxes.

Implementation Timeline

City staff have stated that rate tables would be recalculated after certification of the November results, with new charges applied starting the January 2027 billing cycle for accounts read after December 31, 2026; construction projects funded by the additional revenue are projected to begin site work in the second quarter of 2027 in the Pine Hills and Holden Heights neighborhoods.

The 2020 U.S. Census recorded Orlando's population at 307,573, a figure the city utilities department uses to estimate that roughly 65 percent of accounts are residential and would therefore fall under the new rate schedule.

Voter approval requires a simple majority, after which the city council must adopt an implementing ordinance by December 15, 2026; the first public progress report on funded projects is scheduled for the March 2027 council meeting.