When the Auburn city councilors passed the new budget last week, they accomplished several things that should not make them proud.

The budget included a provision to charge for garbage pick-up for nonprofit organizations like food pantries and soup kitchens. These volunteers do wonderful work in our community serving thousands of meals annually. We should be doing everything possible to help them out, but instead they've decided to punish them with garbage fees.

It's common knowledge that soup kitchens and pantries are primarily run by churches and related groups. o this is also an attempt to tax churches, something that all levels of government, from the smallest village right up to the feds, should steer clear of. Churches are exempt from paying taxes, as well they should be, and that's exactly the way it should stay.

Of course, the first thing city leaders do is manipulate the language of what they're doing. Since churches are tax exempt, they simply change the name of the garbage charge from a tax to a fee. Clever, don't you think? And they really believe (trust me on this) that we're all too stupid to pick up on it.

Hopefully, churches all over Auburn are checking into the legalities involved in this church tax. The liberals are always screaming about the so-called separation of church and state. Where are they now?

Finally, and this one may be the worst consequence, this new garbage tax opens the door for future taxes on all Auburn residents. Don't think for a minute that this is where it's going to end.

Next year, when the city budget is proposed, I guarantee it'll contain a garbage tax for everybody.

This year is just a way to soften us up.

City Councilor David Dempsey was the only “no” vote on the budget. Remember when we elected all those new faces to city council? Graney, Smith, Lattimore?

Where were these guys when the churches were being burdened with taxes?

Why would any of them let the word “tax” be manipulated into “fee”?

We thought we'd see the council come alive with new blood only to find out that they were allowing their own people to be attacked.

I hate to say it but it seems that all we did was trade in the old regime for a new one.

We need to take care of our own Auburn residents, especially those who need it the most: the poor, the hungry, the sick and the needy.

Ducayne's column appears Tuesdays in The Citizen, and she can be reached at

sacredheart6005@hotmail.com