This post has been edited to correct misinformation from its original posting. Apologies. HG

The Inquirer has an interesting in-depth analysis of the city’s tax abatement program. The story is one of the most extensive looks at a program that has changed the face of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the story leaves the consequences for Philadelphia schools as somewhat of an afterthought.

Although the city has arguably reaped benefits from tax abatements (wage/sales taxes, development, residential sales, etc.), the school district has suffered immeasurably from the program with little recompense from the city. In its newspaper version, the Inky published a chart of the tax impact on the city and schools. I inquired about the specific numbers on the chart, and then did a 60% calculation of the amount that would have transferred to the schools.

Here's what the cost of abatements will be for the schools:

• since 2008: City = $84,727,393 in total lost revenue
  Schools = $50,836,436 forfeited

• by 2012: City = $181,406,923 in total lost revenue
  Schools = $108,844,154 forfeited

• by 2016 (peak loss): City = $239,932,516 in total lost revenue
  Schools = $143,959,509 forfeited

Between 2016 and 2025, the total amount lost for schools declines. The District will begin to see profits from the program in 2025 when we get the first check for $1.6 million . . . after 26 years. By 2025, all three of my children will have graduated from high school – a generation, in my opinion, robbed.

Robbed partly because the City has largely not compensated for the losses or engaged in serious dialogue about ways to offset the cost of losing millions of dollars a year.

To its credit, in 2007, City Council voted to transfer a little less than 2% of real estate taxes to the school district, resulting in roughly $20 million additional dollars a year. However, keep in mind that this was the first city increase since the state takeover, and no where in the city’s five year plan is there discussion of options for additional revenue generation to the schools.

Other cities, as the story points out, target their abatement programs to minimize financial costs:

Some national abatement researchers say the city is giving away the store to the wealthy.

"Philadelphia is being overly generous. It makes absolutely no sense," said C. Kurt Zorn, an Indiana University professor who did a national study of abatements in 2005.

Abatements offered by other cities usually have significant restrictions. They can be used only in low-income neighborhoods, for instance, or the discounts are capped.

Not so in Philadelphia.

"The whole idea of an abatement is that it's not an across-the-board tax break," Zorn said in an interview. "It's supposed to target aid to areas that are traditionally blighted. I don't think downtown Philadelphia is blighted."

The story includes boosterish revenue projections for the district, but here’s the problem: Property tax revenues are the bread and butter of school financing. They’re just about the only funds we’re legally entitled to. Anything else we have to beg and scrape for - and I mean beg and scrape. It's painful to look at the next 17 years as potentially a "lost generation" for public school financing. We won't recoup that money; and we'll suffer the consequences for its loss.

And telling kids to wait 26 years for profits that may or may not come down the road is a lot to ask when our kids need books, our teachers are underpaid, our classrooms are overcrowded, our libraries (within and outside of school) are closing, and the best we get, is "the school district will get theirs."

I am neither a critic or supporter of the tax abatement program. But this city needs an honest accounting and public dialogue for the costs of any program and what it's doing to ameliorate the financial problems tax abatements cost for a generation of public school children and families.