Council Disbands Embattled North Hollywood Panel : Redevelopment: A new election is ordered. The chairwoman of the citizens advisory group calls the action illegal.

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday disbanded a citizens advisory group dominated by critics of North Hollywood’s redevelopment project and ordered an election for new members in September.

The head of the group said it would not go away quietly.

“This is outrageous,” said Mildred Weller, chairwoman of the North Hollywood Project Area Committee. She announced after the council’s 10-0 vote that the committee would hold its own election Tuesday.

“This is about control,” she said. “The council and the Community Redevelopment Agency want control of the project area. They want a rubber-stamp committee.”

Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area and moved to dissolve the group, denied Weller’s allegations. He said he wanted to end the deadlock that has brought the committee’s work to a virtual standstill.

The Project Area Committee, formed in 1977 to advise the Community Redevelopment Agency on the 740-acre North Hollywood redevelopment project, has had a long history of confrontations between pro- and anti-redevelopment factions.

At least one meeting ended in a fistfight. In the most recent dispute, which eventually led to Friday’s council action, Weller and an aide to Ferraro literally pounded separate gavels in efforts to exercise control of a meeting.

The controversy is over the legality of the February election of committee members. The city attorney’s office investigated and said there were irregularities then and in an election last year, Ferraro press aide Erin Egge said.

The city attorney said several members had been seated in error, leaving the group with only eight members and lacking a quorum, Egge said.

Under state law, a redevelopment advisory group must have a minimum of 15 members and a maximum of 25. “The city attorney decided the committee was no longer a legal entity,” she said.

In April, Ferraro sent his planning deputy, Renee Switzer, to take over the group until it could elect more members itself or call a general election and allow the community to select a whole new committee. Weller, pounding an oversized gavel, refused to relinquish control of the meeting to Switzer.

Ferraro then announced his intention to disband the committee.

Since then, it has continued to meet, but Ferraro has not recognized any of its actions. Nor will the city recognize the election that the committee is holding Tuesday, Egge said.

At Friday’s meeting, Weller and other committee members said the council’s action was illegal.

“There is no authority for a second PAC under state law,” said committee member Don Eaton, a North Hollywood businessman. “If you disband the present North Hollywood Project Advisory Committee, you’ve disbanded the redevelopment agency.”

Ferraro said: “We’re not appointing a second committee. We’re just forming a new committee.”

Egge denied the committee members’ allegations that the move to disband the group was a “power play” on Ferraro’s part. “He just wanted to break the deadlock,” she said.

Without a committee in place, the redevelopment agency could not enact several amendments to the project area needed to proceed with the aging community’s revitalization, Egge said.