If you own a home inside Solon's city limits, the fixed part of your monthly sewer bill went from $10 to $37.50 in about two years. That number has nothing to do with how much water you used. It is two flat charges, the Sewer Debt Fee and the Sewer Usage Fee, and both were adjusted by the Solon City Council this summer through Ordinance 496 and Ordinance 497. The new rates took effect July 1, 2026, and showed up on the utility bills mailed at the end of that month.
I bring this up because I keep meeting buyers who compare Solon to Iowa City, Coralville, and North Liberty almost entirely on list price and square footage. That comparison misses something a Solon closing will teach you fast: the monthly cost of owning here is being reshaped in real time by a single infrastructure project, and the city has been unusually direct about why.
What the city is actually paying for
Solon is building a new $27.5 million wastewater treatment plant on a site the city purchased near Oakland Cemetery along Highway 382. The current facility is aging, cramped, and subject to tighter discharge limits than it was designed for. Iowa DNR rules require a 20-year capacity projection for a new plant of this size, which is part of why the numbers involved are so large relative to a town this size.
The financing plan, laid out by the city's financial advisors at Northland Securities, leans on a 20-year state revolving fund bond for $20 million repaid through sewer bill revenue, a second 20-year SRF bond for $5 million repaid through other city funds, and roughly $2.5 million in reserve cash the city has been setting aside in high-yield CDs for this purpose. Completion is targeted for June 2029.
The Solon Economist's coverage of the June 17 council meeting tied the rate increases directly to that financing plan. The city also mailed more than 1,300 letters to residents ahead of the change and held two public information sessions in late June to walk through it.
The fee schedule, side by side
Here is what actually moved between the pre-2025 rates and the schedule that took effect this July.
| Charge | Before July 2025 | Effective July 2025 | Effective July 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sewer Debt Fee | $10/month | $15/month | $26/month |
| Sewer Usage Fee | did not exist | $5/month | $11.50/month |
| Sewer rate, base tier | — | $16.07 per first 1,500 gallons | $16.39 per first 1,000 gallons |
| Storm Sewer Fee | $0.50/month | $0.50/month | $0.50/month |
Two things are worth sitting with. First, the Storm Sewer Fee did not move at all across either cycle. The increases are concentrated almost entirely in the charges tied to the new plant, which tells you the city is being precise about where this money goes rather than raising rates across the board. Second, look at the sewer rate's base tier. The included volume before you hit the higher per-1,000-gallon rate shrank from 1,500 gallons to 1,000 gallons. A household using the same amount of water as last year now pays the marginal rate on more of it, even before you account for the higher marginal rate itself. That is a quiet second increase layered under the obvious one.
Growth pays for growth, by design
What makes Solon's approach worth understanding, rather than just noting, is that the city has been explicit about the philosophy behind it. In a feature on the city's infrastructure planning, city engineer Dave Schechinger described the approach to developers directly: they are
"expected to pay for those costs and not put that burden on the existing population."
That is the mechanism. Solon is financing its growth through the rate structures attached to the systems being expanded, sewer bills for the sewer plant, rather than spreading the cost across a broad property tax increase that would hit every homeowner regardless of whether they're driving the growth. If you already own in Solon, this keeps your general tax bill more insulated. If you're buying into Solon right now, you are stepping directly into the rate structure that is funding the expansion, on a schedule the city has already published through 2029.
This is the piece that a bare comparison of Solon's median price against Coralville's or North Liberty's will not show you. Two towns can have similar sale prices and very different cost trajectories once you account for how each is choosing to pay for its own growth.
The town is growing on a specific plan, not by accident
Solon's own wastewater planning documents, filed as part of the DNR-required 20-year projection, assume roughly 4 percent annual population growth and put the city's population at approximately 10,000 by 2050. Today's population is closer to 3,200. That is not gradual drift. It is a town planning to nearly triple in size within a generation, and building the pipes for it now.
The utility rate increases are not the only visible piece of that plan. Right now, the city is also running a request for proposals for the Solon City Centre Development Project, covering the 100 block of North Street between Iowa Street and Dubuque Street, along with the former Fire Station building at 131 N. Iowa Street. Proposals were due to Solon City Hall by August 7, 2026, just over a week ago as of this writing. Whatever gets built on that block will shape downtown Solon for a long time, and it is moving forward on roughly the same timeline as the wastewater plant.
If you are the kind of buyer drawn to Solon for its small-town feel around Lake Macbride and the Sugar Bottom trails, it is worth knowing that feel is not static. The city is investing in the infrastructure to support meaningfully more people, and the bill for that is arriving before the growth does, not after.
What this means if you're comparing neighborhoods
A rising utility rate is not, by itself, a reason to avoid a town. It can be the opposite: a sign that a community is investing in its own capacity instead of letting an aging system quietly fail. But it does mean the list price and the property tax rate are not the whole cost picture, and a buyer weighing Solon against Coralville or North Liberty should ask a few more specific questions before assuming the numbers are comparable.
- Is the home inside Solon's corporate limits and served by the municipal water and sewer system, or is it on an acreage outside city limits served by a private well and septic system?
- What is the current utility bill for the specific property, not just the published rate sheet?
- Are there any adopted rate increases scheduled beyond what's currently billed?
- Is the property within a tax increment financing district tied to the downtown redevelopment project?
These are the kinds of questions I walk through with clients looking at Solon alongside other communities in the Iowa City metro, especially move-up families who care as much about long-term carrying costs as they do about the number on the listing.
A few questions worth asking
Does a rising utility fee affect my mortgage approval? No. Lenders calculate debt-to-income using principal, interest, taxes, and insurance. Utility bills are not part of that math, but they are a real monthly cost you should budget separately, especially one that has more than tripled in a fixed portion over two years.
Will Solon's rates keep climbing through 2029? The city has tied the current increases to a project with a 2029 completion target and 20-year bond terms, so further adjustments are plausible as the project moves through construction. No schedule beyond the current fee sheet has been published, and the best source for updates is the city's own utility billing page.
Does any of this apply to homes near Solon but outside city limits? No. Properties outside the corporate limits typically rely on private wells and septic systems rather than the municipal system, which means a different transaction step applies at resale, Iowa's time of transfer septic inspection, rather than a utility rate schedule. If you are weighing a rural acreage against an in-town lot, that is a separate conversation worth having early. My post on buying a getaway or investment property near Solon goes into more of what that comparison looks like.
If you're trying to figure out what a specific Solon property will actually cost you month to month, or how that stacks up against a comparable house in Coralville or North Liberty, I'd rather walk through the real numbers with you than let a listing sheet do the talking. Reach out through Hammes Realty and let's schedule a consultation.
