Mayor Farivar, Council and staff

For the sake of transparency, a principle that the city has not demonstrated with us, I have attached a copy of my letter to the Echo in response to the troubling interview published last week in the Echo. You have all the information necessary to contact me as president of the Riverbend Park Association and our attorney, Steve Demarest. Our community represents the most affected population by your offline planning with KOA to ignore written agreements signed by the city, your own LMC and personal promises from the mayor and city officials to remove the incompatible KOA traffic from our residential street, but not even a peep to us from the city.
 
The mayor, city hall and some councilmembers say that we knew that the RV park was there when we bought our homes so we should accept that park traffic should clog and deteriorate the safety and peace of our residential road but they deceptively omit the fact that we purchased based on a binding conditional use permit, signed agreements with the city, existing LMC and promises from the city that there would no longer be KOA traffic on our residential street once the new road was complete. Again, so much for transparency.
 
You have copies of all the agreements and history but choose to ignore them. Very disturbing!
 
The existing exit and Zeltstrasse, a thinly veiled surrogate for the existing exit to dump KOA traffic onto our street, must be closed and gated except for emergency vehicles, a common practice in use throughout our region.
 
I must admit that I’m baffled why you would subject city government to the inevitable loss of public trust from your actions for a group of South Dakota lawyers who, in my opinion, would throw city government, public safety and the quality of our beautiful region under the wheels of the next 60 foot RV coming out of the campground driven by an inebriated octagenarian with trifocals, if it suited them. We, on the other hand, are part of this community with children going to the same schools and members attending the same places of worship as you. We are the ones who contribute to the civic and commercial successes of the city. This is not how you treat your neighbors and friends with respect and honesty. I say this with the exception of the few councilmembers that I admire who have demonstrated the integrity and grit to stand fast against the effort to renege on agreements.
 
We must now watch you like hawks and pay an attorney to keep from being thrown under that same RV by city hall and KOA, which we will do, with the heartbreaking knowledge that we can no longer take the city at it’s word.
 
We trusted you!
 
I hope you will reconsider this slippery slope you have embarked on.
 
Regards
 
Dan Labriola
President, Riverbend Park Association.