School Officials, Residents Debate Closure of Poli Street : Ventura: Traffic concerns are pitted against student safety. City Council meeting runs late into the evening over divisive issue.

Ventura residents and school officials heatedly debated traffic problems and student safety before the Ventura City Council Monday, arguing late into the evening whether to continue to close a section of Poli Street at Ventura High School.

About 100 hillside residents, parents and students attended the boisterous public hearing. Neighbors opposed the closure because it would increase traffic congestion on surrounding residential streets.

Yet students and school administrators pushed for the more permanent gates, arguing that student safety outweighs the inconvenience of diverting some traffic.

Ventura High School administrators said the closure is essential to protect students.

“Not too many schools have a street in the middle of campus,” Assistant Principal Diane Wootten said before the public hearing. “We’ve been concerned about drive-bys. They can get in one end and go out the other end real fast.”

The council in August had already voted to close Poli on school days, but the debate was reignited Monday when council members discussed how to implement their earlier decision.

Poli Street is a major east-west thoroughfare that runs through the middle of the high school campus. Currently, wooden barricades are used to close Poli between Catalina Street and Hill Canyon Road from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on school days. Two hillside residential streets--Palomar Avenue and Sunset Drive--also have wooden barricades to detour traffic toward Main Street.

The proposal before the council was to give school officials permission to replace the wooden barricades with swinging metal gates and breakaway chain gates--a more permanent solution that upsets hillside residents. School officials said they do not know how soon the gates would be installed.

City officials are emphasizing that the metal swinging gates would be considered a temporary measure until a committee figures out a long-term solution for Poli Street.

Ventura school officials have asked the council to close Poli Street in 1974, 1991, 1992 and again this year. The most recent request came after a Ventura High School student was stabbed several blocks from the school in February.

Hillside residents accused school district officials of using fear to unfairly influence the council into changing traffic patterns.

“A gang can approach a barricade and spray lead while they’re making a U-turn,” said Albert Christopher, a Hyland Avenue resident. “A gate will not prevent them from shooting. It’s a terrible idea.”

When Poli is closed, traffic is rerouted onto narrow, hillside streets, according to a city-ordered traffic study. A trial closure earlier this spring pushed about 430 more vehicles per day onto Sunset Drive up the hill from campus. Traffic on Palomar and Hyland avenues increased 150%, or by 800 cars a day.

Some council members said they did not want to install barricades at Sunset and Palomar, but state law compels the council to take some action to reduce traffic on those residential streets.

Some residents said they are worried about getting in and out of their neighborhoods in emergencies. The proposed breakaway chain gates can be broken by fire engines and police cars pushing through in an emergency, city officials said.

Residents offered alternative solutions such as building brick walls, a pedestrian overpass or moving the campus. Yet all of them would be far more expensive than installing traffic gates.

The council was also expected to direct a committee of hillside residents and school and city officials to continue working on a long-term solution that would satisfy the neighbors and school officials.