The head of the Napa Valley Housing Authority acknowledged Tuesday that he dipped into city of Napa funds to pay for construction at two Upvalley farmworker camps this year, but said that responsibility for the more than $1 million in cost overruns at the camps is shared by other local officials.

Housing Authority Executive Director Peter Dreier said when the NVHA ran out of money to finish renovations at the Calistoga and Mondavi camps, he tapped money from the city fund he oversees. For the past 11 years, Dreier has headed both the Housing Authority of the city of Napa as well as the NVHA, which serves housing needs throughout Napa County.

On Tuesday Dreier said he couldn’t estimate how much he took from the City Housing Authority’s reserve account to finish the farmworker camps, saying he would need to more closely analyze “when the projects went into a deficit situation.”

However, he did say he regretted waiting until Dec. 5 to tell the city housing authority board of directors that for nearly a year he had been dipping into their account.

“That was a mistake. I did not provide them with the knowledge that I was advancing the funds (from the NVHA to the city’s housing authority),” Dreier said. “I wear two hats, that’s the problem.”

Napa Mayor Jill Techel, who sits on the city housing authority’s board along with her four fellow councilmembers and two citizens, expressed “great concern” about the use of the funds.

“Obviously funds should not be able to be diverted from one entity to another without proper authorization,” Techel said, adding that several city and county auditors are investigating the financial tangle.

Revamp of the farmworker camps was originally estimated to cost about $2.6 million, but ended up running closer to $4.2 million.

Dreier said the overages on both projects — $1,020,118 for the Calistoga renovation and $724,264 for the Mondavi remodel — paid for unanticipated repairs and upgrades ranging from installing a new septic system at Calistoga to replacing old aluminum wiring at the Mondavi camp.

He pointed out that county planners and the county counsel’s office reviewed the original plans and budgets for both projects and determined both to be adequate. But county officials later sought many of the upgrades that caused costs to spiral.

Dreier said that after the Calistoga renovation started running significantly into the red in August 2005, he should have rethought launching the Mondavi renovation in February 2006.

Dreier said both the Calistoga and Mondavi projects ran into the same predicament of county-approved plans not lining up with the expectations of county code inspectors.

“In retrospect I should have stopped the Mondavi project when I found out the plans that had been reviewed and approved by the county planning department were inadequate,” he said. But at the time, in the wake of the New Year’s Eve flood that had also sloshed a third camp, River Ranch — the county’s only functioning farmworker facility at the time — forging ahead with both projects seemed prudent.

Work now, funding later

“We were turning away farmworkers and we know there would be a demand come harvest,” he said. “People needed housing and rather than say ‘Stop,’ I thought, ‘let’s get the projects done’ with the focus of going back and getting the funding later.”

He added that he was hardly alone in his mindset that finishing both projects was a priority. He said he had conversations with staff from the Napa County Community Partnership about tapping the county’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund to cover the extra costs.

“At no point did anybody with the county who I was talking to ever say ‘Stop the project,’” he said. “They acknowledged that we would have to collaborate and go look to get additional funds.”

However, a memo issued to the Napa County Board of Supervisors at their Tuesday meeting by the Office of County Counsel, which also provides legal representation to the NVHA, implies that county staff notified Dreier shortly after Mondavi reconstruction had begun that relying on Affordable Housing Trust Fund dollars was speculative at best.

According to County Counsel Robert Westmeyer’s Tuesday memo, an e-mail sent to Dreier by Howard Siegel of the Napa County Community Partnership stated, “it would be difficult for us to ‘indicate support’ of (additional trust fund dollars) in the absence of an estimate as to the amount.”

Dreier also contests recent statements from grapegrowers, wine industry leaders and others serving on both the Farmworker Housing Oversight Committee as well as the NVHA board of directors indicating that they were “blind-sided” by the cost overruns.

Dreier said meeting minutes and agendas will show that he informed the Farmworker Housing Oversight Committee of a $500,000 overage on the Calistoga project on Oct. 27, 2005, two months after he had authorized the project’s first overexpenditure. He broke the same news to the NVHA board during its Dec. 12 meeting, after he gave them a verbal heads-up in early October.

He said he started providing a change order log, which included a running total of overages to both groups in the spring of 2006.

Cancelled meetings

When oversight committee and Housing Authority board of directors meetings were canceled because of holidays or failure to gain a quorum, Dreier said, he still sent agenda packets containing the financial information.

Between September 2005 and December 2006 the oversight committee canceled monthly meetings seven times — three times for a lack of quorum or insufficient attendance, and two times to host the grand opening of the just-renovated Calistoga and Mondavi centers.

Between September 2005 and December 2006 the NVHA board of directors canceled seven meetings, five due to a lack of quorum.

During Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting Pam Kindig, the county’s auditor controller, recommended several approaches to the financial crisis facing the NVHA, which provides services to the county as well as the cities of American Canyon, St. Helena and Yountville.

Beyond an independent audit, she said she plans to put a freeze on NVHA farmworker camp funds provided by county grapegrowers until she sees invoices for expenses related to operating the camps. Kindig also suggested that the financial management of the NVHA be transferred from the city to the county. Before 1997, the county had overseen NVHA finances, according to the Joint Powers Agreement between Napa County and several Napa Valley cities.

Responding to Kindig’s recommendations, Dreier said: “I would encourage a full investigation of all the facts to review all the documents and public records.”

As far as the details he could not provide Tuesday, Dreier said, “It’s not that I don’t want to provide the information. There’s an outstanding legal issue between the two housing authorities that needs to be resolved.”

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