As county and city housing authority officials work to put their financial house in order following the unauthorized spending of $1.4 million on two Upvalley farmworker camps, other economic mishaps of the past year are surfacing.

Not until last week did the county housing authority’s board of directors ratify the 2006-07 budget, which should have been approved by July 1, 2006.

Several members of the agency’s board of directors said news that they hadn’t approved the current budget came as an unwelcome surprise during their meeting last week. Board members described their failure to hold a public hearing and approve the budget as more of a “clerical oversight” than anything else, since they had spent substantial time discussing and drafting the 2006-07 budget, which projects revenues and spending from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007.

Not until Jan. 5 did the city of Napa, controlling the purse strings of both the city and county housing authority, stop disbursing money to the county housing authority pending the board’s approval of a budget.

“We came down to, ‘We aren’t going to pay this until there’s a budget in place.’ They would still send invoices over to pay, and people would come to my office and we said, ‘You need to go to the board and get authority to pay this.’ On Feb. 5 they did a real good housekeeping,” said Jed Christensen, city finance director, referring to the board’s approval of a budget and board authorization to pay several other overdue bills including the installation of a septic system in 2003 at the River Ranch farmworker center — separate from the renovations in question.

Christensen said prior to Jan. 5, when he vowed to Napa’s City Council that the finance department would begin imposing tighter controls over both the city and county housing authorities, the two agencies weren’t required to submit a budget to the city.

“Their budget wasn’t in our system so we treated them differently. After all that’s happened (with the renovation overruns) we started treating them like any other city department. If you don’t have any paperwork to back it up or authority to back it up we’re not going to pay it. They’ve refused to cooperate with us all these years,” Christensen said, regarding the housing authority’s failure to format their budget to fit the city’s computer system since the city started monitoring the agencies in 1995. “Now they’re being good soldiers.”

Napa County Auditor-Controller Pam Kindig took a similar stance, requiring a budget before releasing to the city of Napa any CSA 4 funds — a tax paid by grapegrowers for the operation of farmworker housing.

“Clearly if you don’t have a budget in, I don’t have authority to pay the bills and process checks,” Kindig said.

Members of the county housing authority board said they were grateful financial officials recently caught the discrepancy, but also frustrated that housing authority staff hadn’t ensured this final and critical financial base was covered.

“Here we are eight months later dealing with something that’s pretty fundamental to the financial side of the authority,” said board member John Dunbar, who also serves on the Yountville Town Council.

Dunbar said just like any government agency, the members of the housing board “rely significantly on staff to provide accurate and timely information for us to review.” He added that since the housing authority board meets more infrequently — monthly — than most town and city councils — usually biweekly — the housing authority board leans even more heavily on the staff for information and direction.

Board member Bonnie Schoch, also a council member in St. Helena, assured that the board was closely involved with creating the budget but “forgot to do a little check mark.”

“Quite honestly the problem is that the city of Napa’s financial department is overwhelmed and their computer system is so antiquated. This is something they should have caught when (the housing authority) went to write their first check,” Schoch said. “Now it’s like, ‘OK, add this to the list of things that went wrong.’”

Schoch also lamented the fact that by overstepping the budget approval process the board failed to give the public an opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns about the budget through the standard public hearing.

“Until the (farmworker renovation) overage happened, how many people were attending the meetings and challenging us? None,” Schoch said. “Does it take away the public’s opportunity to challenge our decision? Yes. Does this change what the outcome would have been? Probably not.”

County Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht, who chairs the county housing authority board, said the board was simply taking the final action “we thought we had done last year.”

“So it was really basically a technicality — that’s my feeling,” he said.