The time is right to do something to alleviate the uneven and unfair burden of property taxes on Boston's residents and businesses.

As Beacon Hill residents are probably, painfully aware, property taxes increased dramatically with the city's most recent property assessments. Some property owners saw increases of 25 to 50 percent.

The average increase in property values citywide was 3.9 percent. But some neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill, saw much higher increases. The neighborhood's average increase was 6.8 percent (this includes other downtown neighborhoods, such as Back Bay. Other neighborhoods saw higher than average increases as well, including Charlestown (with the highest, at 12.0 percent), Jamaica Plain (5.4 percent) and the South End (6.5 percent).

But, as the mathematically astute among you have already deduced, higher than average increases in some neighborhoods mean lower-than-average increases in others. Hyde Park, Roxbury, Dorchester and East Boston actually saw property values fall — East Boston dropped the most, by 3.8 percent.

Since property taxes move on track almost exactly with assessments, the effect of all this is that some neighborhoods received large increases in their taxes, others saw average increases and still others saw their taxes go down.

The City Council, largely at my urging, is now exploring ways to soften the burden of exorbitant rises in the property tax. One proposal now being reviewed by the council is to cap any increases at a certain annual percent — say ten or 15 percent. Other, more complicated approaches would install circuit breakers that would limit the amount of property taxes anyone pays to a certain percent of one's income, thereby avoiding the scenario of people on fixed incomes being forced out of their homes by exorbitant property taxes.

But in the long-run these fixes don't address the underlying problem, which is the uneven changes in assessments across neighborhoods.

The question Boston's policy makers should be asking themselves is, why are some neighborhoods appreciating while others are depreciating? The blithe answer is that there are market forces at work, something completely outside of anyone's control.

That's not wholly true, however.

Neighborhoods appreciate because they are perceived as being more attractive, and so demand for space in those neighborhoods increases rapidly, driving up values. Other neighborhoods depreciate for the same reasons, only reversed:  they are perceived as less attractive. Demand for properties falls, thereby driving down prices.

What makes neighborhoods attractive? Good schools, safe streets, well-paved and well-lighted roads, strong transportation systems, healthy local business districts, well-maintained and plentiful green spaces, clean and graffiti-free buildings. These are clearly factors over which government has a profound influence.

The logical consequence of this argument is that we should target our attention to those communities where values seem to be falling — that resources should be used as evenly as possible to enhance the well-being of all neighborhoods. A quick drive around Boston makes it clear to even the most casual observer that some neighborhoods today fare better than others. Pushing to help those neighborhoods that are worse of would, most obviously, help those neighborhoods. It also would help keep down tax hikes for neighborhoods like Beacon Hill.