Greetings, Sheldon:
I received the issue of the Ventura Breeze, including the piece on San Buenaventura State Beach today! I was so excited that you included two copies! Thank you so much for including this in your local paper and sending the copies to me. This truly made my day….week…..month!
Best to you,
Amannda DeBoef Office of Experiential Learning
UMKC School of Pharmacy
Breeze:
We are appalled by the proposed high-density housing on Johnson Drive from Northbank to Capri. The GPAC’s to change the zoning along the Johnson corridor from “Commercial” to “Mixed Use 3 and 4 Stories” would allow additional apartments to be built above businesses all along Johnson. Developers may also ask for an increased height variance by applying for the state’s “Developer Density Bonus” for building out “underutilized” commercial space.
Johnson Drive is highly sensitive to this density change because it is one of the main arteries to the 101 freeway, government center and the existing communities on the east end. There does not seem to be any plan to proactively develop the infrastructure to support the future impact to traffic on Johnson Drive and the neighboring streets. Beyond Bristol Road, Johnson Drive is only a 2 lane road that does not have the capacity to be expanded to support the amount of traffic the proposed housing will create as there are houses on both sides of the street.
The new 302 unit Northbank apartments going in across from Motel 6 will have no additional infrastructure improvements to handle the expected 2,700 extra daily trips beyond a new traffic light on Johnson at Motel 6. It is naive to think all these residents will ride a bike or take the bus. There is no apparent prioritization among the city legislators to relieve the congestion all this higher density will bring. The existing residents will have to bear the burden of short-sighted planning on the impact to traffic on Johnson and the neighboring streets. We will sit in traffic more and we will be expected to conserve our water and other resources even more than we do now. We are destroying Ventura’s quality of life for all residents.
Chris and Terrie Longo
Breeze:
Cannabis Business Permits
The store I visited last week was very clean and employed a good level of security to include personal governmental identification to pass through a locked wall and door barrier; and including security guards outdoors at the entrance. I hope they do very well because that will fill the cities coffers very quickly.
The above leads directly to my next observation. City street maintenance. I have to agree with Diana White and her comments about our street disrepair. Didn’t Ventura receive a large chunk of funding for our streets a year ago?
Where did all the money go?
Down the storm drains for storm water recovery?
Diana mentioned Spinnaker, the road to our “jewel”, The Ventura Harbor, but this is not the only road in Ventura that is an embarrassment to drive on, try Ralston and many of the roads around Montalvo housing area.
Maybe with all the pot shops opening in Ventura the cities coffers can afford to contract with a road construction company like Granite Construction to repair or replace our crumbling roads.
I realize it is hard for a city to manage its roads and highways when every other month some utility must destroy a once good road to upgrade a wire or pipeline. Could not the city manage this type of work with an announcement to all the utilities and services that use the city rights of ways to bury their products an advance notice of pending construction on specific roads and highways? Then maybe they all could upgrade at the same time.
Michael Gordon
She does not understand the concept of Roman numerals.
She thought we just fought World War Eleven.
~ Joan Rivers
