There's more than one way to raise a tax.

This letter to the Projo, which links to righttax.org, makes a point worth hearing:

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."