The Democrat and Chronicle's March 4 article "How Taxing" claimed that our local property taxes are "among [the] nation's highest." But there is a difference between tax rates being high and tax bills being high. The reason our local tax rates are so high is that our local property values are so low.

Here is a different way to look at the local property-tax burden: per capita. The Census Bureau says that in 2003, the average per-capita local property tax in the United States was $984 (www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/07statab/stlocgov.pdf, Table 425). By comparison, the combined city, school, county, and Pure Waters tax levies within the City of Rochester are currently around $201.2 million. Rochester has a population (as estimated by the Census Bureau for 2005) of 211,091. That yields a per-capita local property tax in the City of Rochester of $953, slightly below the national average.

We in the City of Rochester are blessed, or cursed, depending on your point of view, with very low property values, compared to much of the rest of the country. I myself prefer to view it as a blessing. A young person can still buy a "starter" home here on a modest income, which he or she would probably not be able to do in Scarsdale, Seattle, or San Francisco.

But do our low home prices entitle us to correspondingly low taxes? If our houses would sell for a fifth of comparable houses in higher-priced markets, do our taxes also need to be one-fifth? The cost of housing may be much lower here, but the general cost of living is not, nor is the cost of providing government services.

If we calculated our utility costs as a percentage of home value, or our homeowners insurance premium as a percentage of our home's market value, those also would probably show high local rates compared to a national average. But we don't do that, because we don't expect those items to be directly related to market value. Why do we expect local taxes to be?

We are misled into thinking that the property-tax levy should follow property value because the levy is distributed locally based on property value. The distribution of tax within a given jurisdiction is based on property value, but there is really no reason to think that the size of the tax levy for a given community will be a function of that community's current market value.

I have a sister in Seattle who has a house very similar to my house here in Rochester: similar lot size, similar age and style of house. My house is actually a little bigger, and has a garage, which hers does not. Her house is assessed at a value seven times what mine is (both at full value). Her property taxes are $4,941; mine are $2,317. Am I overtaxed? I don't think so.

Susan Hauser, Rochester