Group Asks Ferraro to Drop Support for CRA Extension : Redevelopment: The councilman has introduced a motion to renew the agency’s ability to seize property in North Hollywood beyond February.

About 200 North Hollywood residents and property owners have called on Councilman John Ferraro to reverse his support for a measure extending the taxing and land seizure powers of the North Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency.

In the first organized opposition to the extension, five people met with Ferraro this week and presented him with a protest petition, an outgrowth of earlier protests against the agency’s citizens advisory committee.

The group is continuing to collect signatures, said spokeswoman Mildred Weller, owner of an advertising agency in North Hollywood.

Under state redevelopment laws, the CRA is authorized to buy land, requiring the owners to sell, if necessary. The property is then resold to chosen developers at a discount to promote construction of higher-value projects.

Eventually, the city benefits from increased property taxes on the improved land. Some of the increased tax income may return to the redevelopment agency to fund other improvements in the area or to recoup the cost of starting the project.

The CRA’s ability to seize property in North Hollywood expires in February. With the support of the agency’s officials, Ferraro introduced a motion in May that would extend that power and also raise the existing $89-million cap on the CRA’s share of property taxes paid on improved properties within the 740-acre project.

Ferraro’s motion is being studied by the council’s Redevelopment Committee.

Weller complained that under the CRA, “property is being taken unfairly and given to developers. It seems to be a pretty stacked deck against the community.

“We believe there was no true blight in North Hollywood in the first place and that the agency shouldn’t have come in. They built some beautiful projects, but it’s a matter of property rights. They took people’s property away.”

Ferraro said Friday that he is discussing the group’s objections with CRA officials.

“I share some of their concerns and will look into it,” Ferraro said. “Some of the buildings they showed me that they were worried would be taken over by CRA looked pretty good, and maybe they shouldn’t be taken down.”

But Ferraro said the project has benefited the community. Since it began operating in North Hollywood in 1979, the CRA has sponsored such developments as the 10-story television academy building and the 200-unit Magnolia Towers senior citizens project.

Weller said her group is organizing against the CRA partly because a citizens advisory committee for the redevelopment project changed its bylaws to prevent non-members from voting last month in an election to fill vacancies on the board. The election was held in a meeting punctuated by catcalls from the audience, the latest in a series of disturbances by protesters at the committee’s meetings.