Group to Collect Signatures for Recall Petition : Politics: Residents trying to oust two Dana Point City Council members will need support from 20% of the city’s 18,000 registered voters to trigger an election.

A group of Dana Point residents has won approval to circulate a petition calling for the ouster of Mayor Karen Lloreda and Councilman Harold R. Kaufman.

“We will be on the streets by Saturday with the petition,” said Jack Roberts, a member of CHANGE, the group behind the recall movement.

CHANGE--Citizens Help Against Non-Representative Government and Excesses--has targeted Lloreda and Kaufman for recall because they say the council members have “repeatedly ignored the will of the people who live in Dana Point.”

“You vote for tax-and-spend projects that only benefit your out-of-town cronies,” the group wrote in its petition, citing among other projects the planned upgrades at Dana Hills High School.

“You won’t stop the deterioration and keep Dana Point livable.”

In response to the petition, Lloreda and Kaufman have urged residents not to sign it, calling the charges “trumped up and malicious.”

“Unfortunately, those who filed this petition did not bother to look at the facts,” Lloreda said Thursday. “They blatantly misrepresent my positions, using inflammatory cliches to insinuate what the facts don’t support.”

By law, the petition had to be approved by the city clerk. Recall proponents now have 120 days to circulate it among residents, Assistant City Atty. Ken Rozell said.

If the group obtains the signatures of 20% of the city’s 18,000 registered voters, a recall election will be scheduled.