I am totally amazed with Auburn’s government officials. They are constantly promoting growth and economic development, and improving our city’s infrastructure, giving TIFs and requesting bonds to do so – all that to bring new business to the community and help increase the tax base to lower taxes. So far I have seen no tax relief, but instead, tax increases and more traffic congestion downtown.

In the past few years, I have attended city council meetings and planning board meetings and have come to the conclusion that there is a lot of hypocrisy with our officials. The most disturbing meeting was the one held by the planning board Sept.13. At that meeting, former Mayor Lee Young, who introduced the ADAPT program to encourage economic development, opposed a request from Cumberland Farms to put a car wash, convenience store and fuel station on Minot Avenue at the site of the former Gooseberry Barn.

What happened to progress?

I have a name for people like that. They are NIMBYs – not in my back yard. Those people are all about growth and development as long as it is not in their neighborhood.

Did it matter to them when they took taxpayers’ property by eminent domain to create the River Walk? I think not.

The project by Cumberland Farms would have created tax revenue for the city with no TIFs to the developer and would have created more jobs. Did the River Walk or the new Auburn Hall do that?

Daniel Herrick, Auburn