Neighbors for the Ventura Hillside is a grassroots organization formed to protect Ventura's hillside, Ag land and open space while supporting smart development that maintains and enhances Ventura's organic, small town atmosphere. Neighbors for the Ventura Hillside is a grassroots organization founded in 2014 in response to an attempt by LA developer, Regent Properties, to circumvent Ventura's Hill
side Management Program (HMP) and build a flatland style development on the hillside above Midtown Ventura. When our City Manager, City Staff and most of the City Council seemed in favor of the project even in the face of widespread public opposition, the neighbors in the hillside area formed a loose knit alliance to educate the public on the HMP and how the developer and our City leaders were working in concert to thwart our long standing city policy. Our efforts uncloaked a conflict of interest between our Planning Commission in their decision to move the project to a City Council. The Council approved the pre-screen application for the project but, in the face of tremendous public outcry including a petition with over 7,000 signatures, passed a separate resolution restricting the project with a series of non-binding conditions generally following the HMP. In our continuing fight of this proposed deforming of the most visible and beautiful part of our hillside, our page has grown to over 13,000 followers and receives over 100,000 views each week. We currently host the largest visibility of any community organization FB page in Ventura County. We encourage your participation in our ongoing and lively real-time debate on the issues. On this page, all views are welcome and we don't censor anything other than profanity and hate speech. So, please post or comment but, beware you may get a response filled with facts. In early 2016 the Neighbors for the Ventura Hillside, formed a registered Unincorporated Nonprofit Association. We currently have over 700 members actively working to preserve our hillside and our Hillside Management Program. We now have taken on the wider goal of helping to preserve Ventura County's agricultural land by supporting the extension of SOAR (Save Open space and Agricultural Resources), Measure C which has come under attack by a group of well-funded landowners and developers. The authors and sponsors of Measure F have created a deceptively similar sounding measure that if passed would actually kill SOAR and put thousands of acres of our agricultural land and open space at risk for development. We urge you to support Measure C, and City Measure P this November. We now endorse Matt LaVere and Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios for City Council. Both Matt and Jeannette have pledged to respect the Hillside Management Program in deciding on proposed hillside projects. They have also pledged to hold Regent Properties to the ten guidelines passed by our current Council. We believe Matt and Jeannette will provide a fresh vision and be more responsive to the actual voices of Ventura citizens. To join NVH visit our website at www.VenturaHillsideNeighbors.com
