NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— Organizers with NOLATOYA.org are now saying they are close to getting all the signatures they need to recall Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

With the deadline to get all the necessary signatures about a week away, organizers are now discussing where the recall efforts stand.

NOLATOYA.org organizers say they now need around 1,029 signatures. In the last week they received more than 5-thousand signatures. Originally they thought they needed 53,000 signatures, but the threshold was lowered to about 49,000.

“By no means are we stopping at that 1,000 mark. We want 5,000. We want 10,000. We want to have a cushion and put an exclamation point on this,” Eileen Carter with NOLATOYA.org said.

A political science professor at Tulane University, Rosalind Blanco Cook is weighing in on the possibility of the recall happening.

“Seems to be much more optimistic than at the beginning of the endeavor. I think many more people are optimistic that they may be able to do it,” Cook said.

Last week the Times-Picayune newspaper and the NOLATOYA.org organizers reached a settlement in Civil Court that the names of those who signed the petition will not be released until the petition has been turned into the Secretary of State and Registrar’s Office on deadline day. The deadline is Ash Wednesday.