SOLON — Cities in Iowa run on a fiscal year with the FY26 budget beginning on July 1, 2025, and ending on June 30, 2026. City staff begin the pre-budget work in October with the department directors reviewing their department needs, researching expected costs of essential products and services for their department operations, and evaluating the current year’s expenses to help forecast for the coming budget year.
By January 1st, the county auditor provides the cities in their county with the property valuations that will be used to determine the next fiscal year property tax revenues allocated for cities. The county provides both a 100% property valuation of all the property within the city limits and a taxable property valuation.
The 100% valuation is determined by the Assessor’s Office for the county. The state of Iowa’s rollback system determines how much of the 100% property valuation to subject to a tax.
All cities in Iowa rely on property tax revenues from the properties within their cities to help fund the essential functions of city operations. The amount of property tax revenue each city receives varies because each city has its own unique combination of properties that may include agricultural, residential, commercial, industrial, and railroad.
Properties in Iowa are given a property assessment which is the dollar value of the property as determined by the city/county assessor for sake of property taxes.
For example, a single-family residential house may be assessed by the county assessor at the amount of $100,000.
This is considered the assessed value or the 100% value of the property. When you apply the FY26 rollback of 47.4316%, now the taxable value of the same property is $47,461.60 which means that taxing entities (schools, cities, counties, etc.) can levy a portion on the smaller amount of $47,431.60 vs. the full 100% value of $100,000.
Each city in Iowa receives pre-allocated property tax revenues for the upcoming budget year based upon a Consolidated General Fund Levy (CGFL) which varies from city to city. These revenues allow cities to provide essential services to residents including police and fire emergency services, street repairs, snow removal and city general maintenance; and the equipment and staff needed to provide these services. The CGFL revenues also allow for cities to have parks, trials, recreation programs, library services and city facilities.
By January the city staff have the forecasted expenses from the departments and the received information on the expected property tax revenues from the county (based on the state rollback process) and present a draft budget for city council review. The City Council reviews the draft budget with the directors to discuss the essential operating needs for the department.
The proposed FY26 Expenditures are shown at right for the General Fund, which are primarily funded by property taxes:
Once the City Council has decided the priorities and essential needs of the city for the upcoming budget year, they set a levy rate which determines what portion of property tax paid by residents will be directed to the city.
The current FY25 city levy rate is 11.21346. The Solon City Council has reduced the levy rate for FY26 by 20 cents to 11.01255. The table at the top of the next column shows how that city levy rate is applied based upon the taxable valuation of a property and the state rollback rate.
Ideally a lower city levy rate would equate to lower taxes due, however, because the assessor’s valuation can change, and the state rollback changes yearly, lower taxes isn’t always the case.
Property taxes are comprised of several public agencies levy asking. When a resident pays their property taxes twice a year in March and September, the dollars are then distributed among these public entities based upon what they requested on their annual budget.
For the current FY25 budget year, the residents within the city limits of Solon property taxes are collected and distributed as shown at right:
Source: Johnson County Iowa https://www.johnsoncountyiowa. gov/
In comparison to the other cities in Johnson County, Solon has the third lowest city property tax levy in the county for this current fiscal year and has held third lowest place for several years.