Woo May Void Election of Renewal Panel in Hollywood

City Councilman Michael Woo said Wednesday that he may invalidate the results of a Hollywood redevelopment election that critics maintain was improperly run.

The election was held Monday at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood to fill 12 seats on the 25-member Hollywood Project Area Committee, a citizens advisory group on Hollywood redevelopment.

Woo was not present during the balloting but said he is concerned about the way the Community Redevelopment Agency conducted the election.

‘Drastic Step’

“It would be a drastic step to invalidate the election results and I am not saying I will do it,” Woo said. “But my main concern is that there be no question about the validity of the election.”

Critics contend that the 200 to 300 people who participated were not informed before the vote that they should stay until after the ballots were tabulated because of the possibility of runoffs.

Two runoffs were required, but many voters had left the premises before the determination was made, according to Doreet Rotman, a member of the Project Area Committee and a persistent critic of the Community Redevelopment Agency.

“Because there was no announcement of the possibility of runoffs,” Rotman said, “many of our supporters left the church and were not available to back our candidates.”

Election ‘a Farce’

Michael Bodaken, a Legal Aid Foundation attorney who acted as an observer, said that the election was “a farce” that disenfranchised poor residential tenants who fear that redevelopment will be used to remove them from Hollywood.

“The meeting was conducted in a rinky-dink manner,” Bodaken said. “There wasn’t a microphone for the chairperson or enough room to accommodate the large crowd. It smacked of a railroaded election.”

Len Betz, assistant director of the Hollywood project for the Community Redevelopment Agency, defended the electoral process, saying that there was no reason to invalidate the results and hold another election.

“There was an unusually large turnout that caused some logistical problems,” Betz said. “But the election was held openly and democratically. Now if someone is not happy because his candidates lost, that is another matter.”

Betz said that the only thing he would do differently would be to make an announcement before the vote that runoffs were possible. “We did not make that announcement because we never had to face that issue before,” Betz said.

He said that many people did leave the auditorium after casting their first ballots.

Bodaken said that he has been trying to talk Woo into changing the Project Area Committee to include more residential tenants. Under the rules adopted by the City Council, the committee specifies 4 of the 25 seats for residential tenants and the rest for business people, property owners and commercial representatives.

Studying Recommendation

“When you consider that residential tenants make up more the 95% of the people living in the redevelopment area you understand how under-represented they are on the committee,” Bodaken said.

Woo said that he is studying Bodaken’s recommendations to either include more residential tenants on the committee or to set up another group of residential tenants to advise the Project Area Committee.

The $922-million Hollywood Redevelopment Project is bounded by Santa Monica Boulevard and Western, La Brea and Franklin avenues. Approved earlier by the City Council, the project gets under way Aug. 5.