Catherine Orloff sings the praises of the property tax, claiming it “is actually the most appropriate tax to fund schools” (“Property tax better than most taxes,” Commentary, May 7). She might be right except for two features of Rhode Island property taxes that are very unfair to the state’s taxpayers.

In Rhode Island public schools are funded by a combination of state-supplied money and funding generated by cities and towns via property taxes. Unfortunately, in Rhode Island we rely too heavily on the property tax to fund our schools.

The second problem with Rhode Island’s property-tax laws is their impact on existing homeowners. In 2006 the General Assembly enacted a new limit on property-tax levies, limiting levy growth from the present 5.25 percent to 4 percent by 2013. Unfortunately, this law does nothing to limit individual property assessments. So even if a city does not increase its property-tax rate, your property taxes will go up every time your property is “re-evaluated.”

We just received our new property tax assessment from the Town of North Kingstown; it increased by 17.6 percent. So even if North Kingstown’s property-tax rates remain constant, our property taxes will increase by this same percentage. This is one reason why towns like North Kingstown provide property tax relief for their elderly homeowners. Yet many elderly homeowners are forced to sell their homes simply because they cannot afford the property taxes.

There are many ways to compute property tax rates and assessments. For an example of a fairer method that isolates property assessments from real estate market fluctuations, see the RIGHT Web site at http://www.righttax.org .

ROBERT A. BENSON Jr.

Saunderstown