DANA POINT : Council Postpones Choosing a Mayor

Two new City Council members were seated this week, but the council postponed selecting a new mayor.

In an emotional meeting Tuesday night, new council members Toni Gallagher and Harold R. Kaufman were seated along with Karen Lloreda, who was elected to a second term on the five-member panel. Outgoing members Mike Eggers and Eileen Krause, both part of the city’s charter council, stepped down.

Holding back tears, Lloreda thanked Eggers and Krause for their help on council matters over the years and said she considered herself “fortunate” for their efforts.

“Eileen was there when I needed her,” Lloreda said. “Mike pushed me to be well-prepared. . . . It was Mike who encouraged me to stand my ground.”

In his first remarks as a councilman, Kaufman said he had “finally made it” on his third election try. He then added that the new council will be one of a different character.

“I think this council will be more prone to listening to the people, not just the vocal majority but the silent minority we all spoke to during the campaign,” said Kaufman, who promised to “fight crime, fight the El Toro airport and be a fiscal conservative.”

Gallagher, the leading finisher in the extremely close June 7 election, called her election a vote of “the people of Dana Point.”

“I didn’t have any special interests and I didn’t have any developer money behind me,” said Gallagher, who lives on the Headlands and is an outspoken opponent of a pending development plan for that land near Dana Point Harbor.

When it came to their election of a new mayor, the four members could not break a 2-2 tie, a deadlock considered a sign of the divisiveness of the new council.

Mayor Judy Curreri was delayed in returning from a trip to England and was absent.

Gallagher and Councilman William L. Ossenmacher voted to name Ossenmacher, who is currently mayor pro tem, for the one-year mayor term. It has been customary in Dana Point that the mayor pro tem move on to become mayor.

But Lloreda and Kaufman said they would rather wait for a full council to vote for mayor and blocked the Ossenmacher nomination.