Ousted Hollywood Committee Member Blasts Woo

A member of Councilman Michael Woo’s hand-picked Hollywood advisory panel has contested his ouster from the group, saying it had nothing to do with his attendance record, as Woo has maintained, but everything to do with politics.

Woo forced Hollywood businessman Leonard Fenton off the Hollywood Community Advisory Council last month, saying he had missed eight of the 15 HCAC committee meetings, including five of the last seven.

Woo said he wanted to purge the advisory group of members who were not attending enough meetings.

But in a letter to Woo, released this week, Fenton said minutes of HCAC meetings show that there were only 11 meetings of the Economic Development and Transportation Subcommittee on which he served, and that he attended nine of them.

“In fact . . . only one other member and the chair attended more meetings than I,” Fenton wrote.

“Councilman Woo, I must question your motives in expelling me and in attempting to cover up the true reasons,” he said. “I think you owe me a more truthful and frank explanation.”

Fenton told Woo that the HCAC “has so far been largely ineffectual in directing or taking positive action” in advising the city Community Redevelopment Agency in its $922-million Hollywood redevelopment effort.

Fenton said his criticism of the group, and his clashes with Woo, led to his dismissal.

In an interview, Woo, who represents Hollywood, said attendance was the only issue, based on the minutes of the meetings compiled by the CRA.

“We stand by” the attendance records that prompted Fenton’s ouster, Woo said.

Cooke Sunoo, the CRA’s project manager on the redevelopment project, said, however, that the agency’s minutes are not meant to be official attendance documents.

“We don’t have an attendance roll book per se,” Sunoo said.

“If (Fenton) wants to raise the point that others had worse attendance records, he’s probably right.