Port Orange mandates master metering for private communities to shed infrastructure liability

Port Orange mandates master metering for private communities to shed infrastructure liabilityThe Florida municipality voted to end a decades-old practice of managing individual meters within private developments, shifting maintenance and billing responsibilities to property owners.

City Council approved the first reading of Ordinance No. 2026-1 by a 3-1 vote to require master meters for multi-family residential units.

The change affects approximately 1,200 connections across five private parks where the city previously managed billing without legal easements.

Property owners will be given a one-year transition period to assume responsibility for internal infrastructure and sub-metering.

The City Manager cited liability concerns and the inequity of ratepayers subsidizing administrative costs for private entities.

The Port Orange City Council has advanced an ordinance requiring the installation of master meters for private water systems, specifically targeting mobile home and recreational vehicle parks that have historically relied on the municipality to manage their internal infrastructure. The measure, which passed its first reading by a 3-1 vote on February 3, aims to shift the responsibility for internal maintenance and billing from the municipal utility back to private property owners. For decades, the city had been reading and billing individual meters within five specific private communities, covering approximately 1,100 to 1,200 connections. The City Manager explained that this practice occurred without recorded easements or ownership of the internal piping, creating significant liability and financial inefficiencies for the utility’s enterprise fund. "We can't be in private property where we don't have any legal rights... creating an administrative function where city employees are doing the administrative billing at the cost of all the rest of the ratepayers," the City Manager stated. The operational challenges were compounded by aging infrastructure within these private developments. Utility staff noted that because the internal meters and pipes are private property, the city cannot repair them when they fail. This has forced the utility to estimate usage for billing purposes rather than relying on accurate reads. The new ordinance aligns these five properties with the standard operating procedures applied to the city’s other 24 commercial and multi-family developments, which already utilize master metering. Under the new structure, the utility will read a single master meter at the property line and bill the park owner. This arrangement places the financial burden of system efficiency entirely on the property owner, as they must pay for all water passing through the bulk meter regardless of downstream losses caused by leakage in aging service lines. The property owner will then be responsible for sub-metering and billing tenants. To address concerns regarding potential price gouging, the City Attorney noted that Florida state statutes prohibit park owners from charging residents more than the actual cost of the water charged by the utility. Residents from affected communities, including Tanglewood and Lamplighter, voiced opposition during the meeting, fearing that corporate park owners would neglect maintenance or pass on significant infrastructure upgrade costs to tenants. Despite these concerns, the council emphasized the necessity of correcting the irregularity to protect the broader ratepayer base. "We have a responsibility to everybody in our city to operate it in a way that's efficient and this way is not," stated the Mayor. The ordinance includes a one-year transition period to allow property owners to upgrade their systems and establish independent billing procedures.