UPDATE: To get FY 2010 data on the percentage of each community’s revenue that comes from property tax, download an Excel file or PDF. You can also go to the Department of Revenue’s data bank. Our maps and charts were created by combining the DOR’s spreadsheets on municipal budgeted revenues by source (which do not break down property tax revenue) with data on property tax levies by class.

Among communities that provided FY 2010 data to the state, those most dependent on residential property taxes were Sherborn (82 percent of total revenue), Alford and Carlisle (81 percent), and Chilmark and Hampden (80 percent). Those least dependent were Rowe (6 percent), Erving (9 percent), Lawrence (11 percent), Chelsea (12 percent), and Holyoke (16 percent).

one objection to Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to ease property taxes by letting cities and towns impose new taxes on meals and hotel rooms is that, as House Speaker Sal DiMasi said to The Boston Globe, “I don’t think all communities are going to benefit across the board.” But there are already wide differences on how heavily communities rely on the residential property tax as a source of revenue.

At one end of the continuum, more than three-quarters of municipal revenue comes from residential property taxes in the affluent western suburbs of Dover, Sherborn, Carlisle, and Concord, along with several towns in Berkshire County. Among communities with more than 30,000 people, Arlington, Chelmsford, and Lexington are the most dependent on homeowners to fund town services.

For the most part, the communities that don’t squeeze a lot from homeowners make up the difference with help from Beacon Hill. Lawrence, Springfield, and Holyoke are among those cities that get most of their revenue in the form of need-based local aid. (See Head Count, CW, Winter ’07.) Others can keep residential property taxes low because of commercial cash cows—the Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, no longer operating but still paying bills to Rowe; the “Auto Mile” of car dealerships in Norwood; and taxable property owned by MIT in Cambridge.

If the Legislature does give communities the power to levy their own meals tax on top of the state’s 5 percent take, it could be a boon not only to Boston and Cambridge but also to Cape Cod and the Berkshires, as well as the shopping meccas of Burlington and Saugus. But cities with desolate downtowns would depend almost as much as ever on the kindness of local aid. A similar pattern holds for the hotel room tax, which Patrick wants to cap at 5 percent rather than 4 percent and which, unlike the meals tax, already goes into local treasuries. DOR data from past years suggest that Edgartown, Provincetown, and Sturbridge would gain the most from an increase, but Lowell and New Bedford would get almost nothing—unless they can quickly build some hotels and just as quickly gin up some tourist business.