Orlando leaders raised the city’s property tax rate today.

The higher tax rate staves off deep cuts in city services but erases some of the savings that Florida voters approved in January.

“Finding a solution to our budget challenge in this new, post-Amendment 1 era comes down to two choices,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said at a tax workshop this morning. “We can be the City Beautiful, or we can be the city ordinary.”

The City Council adopted a tax rate of $5.65, a 14.5 percent increase over the current rate of $4.9307. Under that rate, the owner of a home with a $200,000 assessed value and a homestead exemption would pay $848 in city taxes next year. The same homeowner would pay $740 if the rate remained unchanged.

Dyer said most Orlando homeowners will see a decrease in their property tax bill, in part because Floridians voted in January to double their homestead exemption.

The higher rate will be coupled with spending cuts, including closing some community centers on Saturdays, eliminating holiday bonuses for city employees, reducing landscaping and mowing schedules, cutting travel and more. The Dyer Administration also plans to look for efficiencies, such as hiring delays and cuts in fuel costs, as well as pulling $2 million out of reserves.

Commissioner Phil Diamond voted against the higher tax rate, saying the council should look at other options before raising taxes. He suggested looking at the downtown taxing district as a possible source of funds, but that idea was met with hostility from most of his fellow commissioners.

City officials said the regular spending increases the city has seen over the past eight years have been somewhat out of their control. They blamed it on higher health care and pension costs for employees, and higher fuel costs, among other things.

The tax rate isn’t final. There will be public hearings on the budget on Sept. 8 and 15, and then the City Council will take final votes on the tax rate. The council can lower the tax rate after the public hearings, but can’t raise it higher than the $5.65 rate approved Monday without a costly official mailing to every property owner in the city.

But in the past, the council has rarely — if ever — altered the tax rate it sets in July.