By Bill Forry

Brace yourselves for a shocker: your neighborhood has once again been shut out of the latest, "definitive" guide to Boston. This, despite the fact that the "Not For Tourists Guide to Boston," which hits bookstores this month, claims to be "the ultimate user's manual to Boston."

Now, it's not like this is the first time this has happened. We're all too aware of how many of our own businesses and institutions duck the "D-word." The most influential, daily "guide" in town - that big city newspaper across the way on Morrissey Boulevard - is located in Dorchester, but uses a Boston P.O. Box as its address. It's ever so much easier and helps avoid any, um, unpleasantries.

And, yeah, Dorchester is routinely left off the maps that hotels and universities hand out to their new arrivals. Nothing new there.

But this latest omission is all the more insulting because the publishers claim their little black book is intended for people who actually live here. (As if we need a guide book to our own city! But that's beside the point.)

Thumbing through the book for the first time, I actually got my hopes up that finally, finally the curse had ended. Roxbury gets a section, complete with instructions on great restaurants like Bob the Chef's and Blue Hill Ave's terrific Dominican eatery, Merengue.

Southie, long a haven for the hip and trendy - as we all know - has so many cool places to check out now that it's broken out into two sections: Fort Point and South Boston (East). J.P. ('course), Brookline, Somerville's Winter Hill, North Cambridge, and Eastie are all dutifully covered with maps, tips, and a litany of fun observations. I loved the one about Southie: "If you're not a pub person, you're probably better off elsewhere." Ouch.

I know what you're thinking: Maybe we should be happy we made the cutting room floor for this one.

Maybe. But c'mon! What gives, Harold T. Kelly, Jr., "city editor"? How do you ignore the biggest section of Boston in a book about ... Boston?

"It's a function of space," Kelly explained this week when pressed by the Reporter for an explanation. "We start at the center of the map and basically draw a circle around that point, six or so miles in each direction."

My map must be outdated, then, because the last time I checked, Cape Cod - which has its own section in the book - is a bit more than six miles from Rowes Wharf.

Well, at least the JFK Library - one of the city's great tourist stops by most accounts and arguably Dot's finest attraction - can make up for the oversight. Oops, I forgot: the Kennedy Library didn't make the cut for this "ultimate guide" either. Must be just outside that six-mile circle, I guess. That's all right. The "Museum of Dirt" on Drydock Ave. (I'm not making this up) is probably much more interesting anyways.

Mr. Kelly insists that there was "no calculated intent" to leave Boston's largest and most diverse neighborhood out of the guidebook. And he pledges that Dot "may" be included in the next one his staff produces in 2006. But don't hold your breath.

The problem with Kelly and his company - besides the fact that they don't know anything about Boston - is that they're a lot more interested in making money off advertising than producing an authentic guide to this town. Besides suffering from a rather gaping blind spot south of Andrew Square, the Not For Tourists company has another thing in common with the publishers of the Boston Globe: they're also headquartered on East Broadway. On the island of Manhattan, that is. Naturally.

•••

A task force charged with re-evaluating the city's school assignment plan announced this week that a new slate of public forums on the subject will begin later this month.

The task force held a series of ten forums- including one in Dorchester- in the winter months to get input from parents on the current, three-zone plan. Now, the volunteer group has come up with several proposed models for restructuring the plan- and will be presenting the models at the upcoming meetings, which include three in our neighborhood. The first one will be on Tuesday, May 4 at the Vietnamese American Community Center on Charles Street, beginning at 6 p.m.

According to Task Force member and UMass Boston Professor Lisa Gonsalves, the proposed models that they've devised- as well as the current plan- will be presented first- and then parents will be asked for some immediate feedback.

"We're going to break the public into smaller groups again to weigh in on each model," says Gonsalves. "We hope to get a sense of which models they hate and which ones they like. After we finish all of the forums, we'll go back and see which models got good receptions."

Gonsalves says that, based on the feedback she saw first-hand at the earlier forums across the city, she does not necessarily expect to reach consensus on any one plan.

"I expect there will be divisions based on different parts of the city, but we're trying very hard to bridge the various parts of the city," says Gonsalves. "We're trying to come up with some models that we hope different parts of the city can live with. We will try to have up to six models."

Gonsalves says that the task force is still on track to make final recommendations on any changes to the assignment plan by "the end of May, beginning of June."

The first public forum will be held on Tuesday, April 27 from 6-8 p.m. at the Harriet Tubman House, 566 Columbus Avenue, in the South End. Other Dorchester hearings will be convened on Thursday, May 20 at the New Boston Pilot Middle School on Columbia Road and on Tuesday, May 25 at the Joseph Lee Elementary School on Talbot Avenue. For more information call 617-635-9014.

•••

A new law passed by the state Senate last week would, if enacted into law, help senior citizens realize savings on their property tax bills, according to state Senator Jack Hart. The bill would make it easier for elderly folks to qualify for state tax credits and allow communities to offer them property tax exemptions, lower interest rates and deferments until the home is sold.

"This bill offers a ray of hope for many seniors on fixed incomes who face skyrocketing property tax bills as communities cope with budget cuts and factor in escalating property assessments," said Hart in a statement. "The tax breaks and credits to which they would be eligible could mean the difference in holding on to their homes or being forced to sell."