Taxes are going up for homeowners – blame a shift in the tax burden from commercial to residential properties.

No, we’re not talking about Auburn this time, and we’re not talking about Lewiston.

The pain this time is being felt in South Portland. That’s right, the Mecca of commercial and retail development in Maine.

That city began sending out new assessment notices last week to its property owners, and its explanation is oh so familiar: residential values have increased much more quickly than commercial.

The median assessment of a single-family home increased by 55 percent in South Portland, according to a story in the Portland Press Herald, from $136,000 to $212,000 in just four years.

It was the same story in the city of Portland in 2005, and it’s no different in Lewiston, Auburn or South Portland.

This should be food for thought for those who think the members of the Auburn City Council are somehow personally responsible for their tax bills going up. They are not; this is the system designated under law.

And, without axing vital public services, there is no way Auburn, Lewiston, Portland or South Portland can cut their way out of, or around, the problem.

Auburn has stuck by its guns. The Lewiston City Council has taken a different tack, throwing out its revaluation and tossing the ticking time bomb back to the state Legislature.

In less than a week, Lewiston taxpayers went from red-in-the-face angry to pat-on-the-back glad after hearing the news. That may work for now, but hoping that the Legislature will provide a solution seems like a long shot.

Like they say, hope is not a plan.

As we have seen over and over again, the Legislature is capable of making piecemeal changes to Maine’s tax system, but all attempts at a major overhaul have come to naught.

Perhaps something fairer can come out of the Legislature in the next session. Perhaps a tax-reform savior will arise out of this year’s governor’s race with a feasible plan and the political savvy to negotiate the minefield of tax reform.

It’s possible. Not likely, but possible.