By Pete Stidman
News Editor

Mayor Thomas Menino is trumpeting good news for city taxpayers this week after Gov. Deval Patrick signed his Property Tax Classification Bill into law. The bill allows residential property owners to benefit from declining home values and a strong commercial real estate market.

"The classification legislation that was passed is going to enable us to reduce the average homeowner's tax bill this year by $142," said Ronald Rakow, head of the city's assessing department. "That's a five percent decrease from last year."

Commercial properties will pay two points more of the total tax levy, bringing their share up to 60 percent, while residential will pick up the other 40. Menino's new law locks in the commercial classification at 175 percent of their assessed value, a figure that would have dropped to 170 percent under a 2004 law. Commercial classification was raised to 200 percent in 2004 to shift more of the burden of skyrocketing taxes to the business world.

According to Shirley Kressel, however, founder of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods, commercial and residential properties are assessed with different formulas.

"The net-income method mandated by state law results in assessments that average only half the value of sale prices of big commercial properties, while residential assessments are tracking 95 percent of sale prices," she wrote in a recent Reporter editorial.

But when asked about the difference and Kressel's opinion, Menino was dismissive.

"We only go by experts, not by guess-perts," he said, adding that state law determines the assessing rates and many minds went into setting them. For his part, he is looking forward to even more property tax relief.

"This is only part of the solution, it's not the whole solution. We have to get the legislature to pass the meals tax and get the legislature to pass the telecommunications bill," Menino said.

Gov. Deval Patrick introduced both the meals and telecommunications bills earlier this year. The meals tax legislation would allow municipalities to levy a one to three percent meals tax at their own discretion. The telecommunications bill would give the cities power to charge property tax to telecommunications companies for their telephone poles and other infrastructure.