Ventura Council to Consider Reopening Streets Near High School

As her friend tells the story, Mary and Virgil Plummer got married as a matter of convenience. They lived less than two blocks apart, but the couple had to travel several miles to see each other when the hillside streets behind Ventura High School have been closed.

“He lived on Palomar, and she lived on Sunset,” said Linda Freiburger. “They got together [emotionally], but they couldn’t get together [physically] because the streets were always closed.”

The Plummers found love. But they and a lot of other neighborhood residents say they have had enough. After four years of having streets barricaded through midafternoon, residents are aggravated, upset and they want the hillside streets permanently open to through traffic.

“I don’t feel any streets should be closed for something other than safety reasons for everybody,” Mary Plummer said. “It just literally makes a cul-de-sac out of the whole hill.”

She is not alone.

The City Council on Monday will consider whether to give those street closures a second look--with an eye to opening some streets to traffic again. Poli Street, however, would not be reopened.

City staff has proposed spending $30,000 to conduct a new traffic study of the area and a corresponding environmental review. Finally, the city would survey residents about various traffic control options.

The city is reexamining the emotionally charged issue after receiving numerous inquiries in recent months.

“The focus of this review would be to determine whether conditions have improved to the extent that the hillside streets could be reopened to through traffic on school days,” City Manager Donna Landeros wrote in a March 26 letter responding to residents’ inquiries. “If not, would speed humps or other alternative traffic controls provide an equivalent measure of volume and speed control?”

At issue is heavy traffic on the narrow, winding streets carved into the hillsides above Ventura High. Those include Fairview Drive, Foster Avenue, Hyland Avenue, Palomar Avenue and Sunset Drive.

Those roads, and Poli Street--which cuts through the middle of the Ventura High School campus--are closed on school days between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.

It all started with the fatal--and still unsolved--stabbing of Ventura High School student Jesse Strobel along Catalina Street after midnight Jan. 29, 1993, as he walked home from his father’s pizza parlor on Seaward Avenue.

Convinced that his slaying was gang-related--and in an effort to stem such violence--the City Council took emergency action and closed the portion of Poli Street which bisects the campus.

But like a rapidly flowing river, the diverted stream of cars merely rushed up the hill onto the smaller streets above the high school.

Many Venturans, who had used Poli Street as a shortcut to avoid the lights and congestion on Main Street--started zooming through the narrow hillside streets behind the school.

Traffic speed and volume increased, upsetting residents of what had previously been quiet streets with limited traffic.

In response, the city closed Palomar Avenue and Sunset Drive on school days by setting up chain barricades and signs.

Eventually, the city made traffic improvements on Main Street to improve traffic flow. Stoplights were phased, traffic-impeding cross walks were removed and lane enhancements were made.

Some residents, who thought the need for back-street shortcuts was no longer crucial, took the issue to the ballot. But Measure E on the November 1994 ballot, which sought to reopen the streets, was defeated by a 2-1 margin. Since then, Poli, Palomar and Sunset have remained closed.

In the past few months, City Hall has received about a dozen letters--most expressing support for reopening the streets.

Opinions on the safety of hillside streets remain sharply divided.

Charlie Peterson, who lives on Hyland Avenue, said he thinks all the hillside streets should be reopened.

“It’s a bad idea as long as Poli is shut down,” he said. He says even now, on weekends drivers throttle down the neighborhood’s narrow, curved streets at 40 mph. “It’s unbelievable,” he said.

The hillside streets have no sidewalks and Peterson said he worries about the safety of his three school-age children. Even as he spoke, a small school bus went hurtling by at high speed.

John Scott, who lives nearby on Palomar, agrees.

“I much prefer the blockade,” he said. “Otherwise there is a huge volume of traffic.” He said traffic on his block increased “remarkably” when Poli was shut down. “Even as it is, there is one car coming through every five minutes.”

But many of those who support reopening the neighborhood streets will be at City Hall on Monday to speak their minds.

“The closings up there on the hill are ludicrous,” said Ventura High alumnae Linda Freiburger, who owns an antique store on Main Street. “Closing Poli was something they wanted to happen. It wasn’t because of any initial killing. That’s just an excuse.”

Newly married Mary Plummer said she intends to be there Monday.

“We did meet at one of those meetings regarding the gates,” she said of her now-husband. “So I guess I can thank them [the barricades] for some good fortune in my life . . . but I see no reason why they can’t open Poli, put some bumps in to slow people down . . . and open all the streets to the public.”