From Lasagna to Double Pay, Housing Board Piques Public
It all started with the idea of recruiting a new breed of commissioner for the Ventura County Area Housing Authority, people “sophisticated” enough to keep up with the increasingly complex work of sheltering the poor.
Faced with shrinking federal dollars and growing mounds of regulations, agency officials set out to find more business-oriented board members who could decipher increasingly complicated housing rules and help meet a growing housing need.
In just over a year, eight new housing commissioners have signed up for duty--constituting a majority on the 15-member board, the largest and most active in the county.
But also over the past year, this more sophisticated board--new members and old members alike--decided it deserved a pay raise for its work, double in fact for showing up for meetings.
And the reinvented board also thought it should have something to eat while grappling with housing issues, including a controversial $210 lasagna dinner last month from Marty’s Catering & Barbecue in Ojai.
On top of that, board member Sharon Pfeifer, appointed in April to represent Camarillo, also thought taxpayers should pay $10 an hour--to the brokerage company she and her husband operate--to baby-sit her two children while she was deciding where Ventura County’s poor should live.
What has resulted is perhaps the first, and certainly the biggest, controversy ever to grip the ordinarily obscure 15-member body, which oversees a $23-million budget and is responsible for guiding the county’s largest housing agency.
To hear some critics tell it, the board has spiraled out of control, ran amok in an atmosphere of little oversight or accountability. And maybe, they say, all this sophistication has backfired.
“It’s like they have lost sight of what their mission is,” said housing advocate Barbara Macri-Ortiz, a lawyer with Oxnard-based Channel Counties Legal Services Assn.
“At a time where we are forced in this county to do more with less, we need a board that is more dedicated, more committed and more willing to sacrifice a little bit,” she added. “The board is not there to be served, the board is there to serve. And if they feel they need to take money, then maybe we should find people to replace them who see the real needs in this community.”
Added Camarillo City Councilwoman Charlotte Craven, who as a landlord has dealt directly with the area Housing Authority for two decades: “They have always lived in a vacuum, they’ve never had the public looking at what they’re doing. But maybe it’s time we took a look at the way they do things.”
Financial Review
As for board members themselves--a handful of whom have served more than a decade, and about half of whom have served less than a year--many have been taken aback by the criticism and the scrutiny, which now includes a review of some of the agency’s finances by federal housing officials.
They say they devote countless hours to agency business, dealing as best they can with the often unpopular issue of housing the poor.
However, many also concede that the recent uproar has exposed divisions on the board, evident at meetings last week peppered with talk of pay raises, bad publicity and the possible need for an independent facilitator to help ease friction among some commissioners.
Still, others among this new collection of financiers, real estate experts and other working professionals have been left scratching their heads, wondering what all the fuss is about.
“We are trying to reshape the agency such that we are prepared for a new world where we’re not going to have all this government funding,” said board member Herbert E. Morrison, who has represented Moorpark on the board since last summer.
He also belongs to the board’s executive committee, which last week voted to recommend doubling commissioners’ maximum pay from $100 to $200 a month, the highest amount allowed by state law.
“I don’t see it as a major issue,” he said of the pay raise. “People come here and give time to do good for their cities, and as you can see we’re always trying to do the right thing. I don’t think we should let a few outside agitators stir things up.”
Added tenant commissioner Vina J. Milburn, also of Moorpark: “I can understand how the public feels, but the public also needs to know all the good things we do.”
In fact, perhaps no agency in Ventura County has done more in the past decade to house the poor.
Since 1986, the Housing Authority has opened two housing projects for low-income families in Thousand Oaks, two others for poor families in Camarillo and Meiners Oaks, and two projects for senior citizens in Thousand Oaks and Moorpark.
In addition, the agency last year opened a group home for the developmentally disabled in Camarillo and formed a nonprofit group to oversee development of an apartment complex in Piru that now houses 35 low-income families.
Needs Are Great
Overall, the Housing Authority owns and manages 350 units of public housing, while administering a federal rent subsidy program that encompasses 2,800 units in seven jurisdictions including Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Ojai and Camarillo.
Despite all that, the agency still has more than 3,000 people on a waiting list to receive rental assistance, while another 2,000 are in line for agency-owned housing.
It is because the need is so great and because resources are growing ever thin that critics have come to question the board’s spending practices. If the Housing Authority is being forced to do more with less, they ask, then why would commissioners vote themselves a pay raise, bill the agency for baby-sitting or buy themselves a $200 dinner?
“There are long-gone board members spinning in their graves at the thought of what’s happening right now,” said former Executive Director Carolyn Briggs, who was fired in September after 10 years with the agency and who has filed a lawsuit to get her job back.
“For them, this was a community service and the thing that made them most proud was seeing that families were being adequately housed,” Briggs said. “The idea of receiving a stipend or getting more than a cookie at a board meeting was the furthest thing from their minds. Now, it’s almost as if that piece of it has taken on a life of its own.”
Up until 1990, board members weren’t even paid for their work. But with meeting attendance often sporadic, the board agreed to start paying a monthly stipend as a way of enticing commissioners to show up.
About two years later, with housing regulations becoming more complex and federal dollars shrinking, commissioners said, they began looking for ways to recruit more business-oriented members who could help develop innovative approaches to meet the growing housing need.
“I came into a board of retirees,” said board Chairman Edward G. Jaloma, a self-employed medical consultant who has represented Fillmore on the panel since 1988. “We needed to get professionals in here from different walks of life, we needed to get new blood.”
Since February 1995, eight new commissioners have joined the board. They include Ojai sign painter Kale Starbird, Camarillo real estate broker Lori Kaye and William Ellington, a minister who represents Fillmore. They joined a more seasoned group that includes Elaine Garber, a school board member in Port Hueneme; Chris Soltow, a teacher who represents Thousand Oaks; and Sue Anderson, a real estate broker who represents Simi Valley.
With the addition of more working professionals, the board shifted from morning to afternoon meetings about a year ago, partly to encourage the public to attend but mostly as a way of making it easier for new members to serve.
About that same time, board members agreed to start buying meals for themselves, running up a food bill of nearly $1,100 so far this year compared to about $680 last year.
Paying to Play
The menu started out small at first, mostly sandwiches and salad put together by staff members. And it topped out with vegetarian lasagna last month at a board meeting held at the agency’s senior citizen development in Ojai.
Under fire for their dining practices, commissioners resorted to pot luck last week at their general board meeting. Instead of catered lasagna, they brought in their own dishes of meatballs, tri-tip and a macaroni salad.
To really boost the incentive for working professionals, however, board members voted in July to double the stipend for general board meetings from $50 to $100. But that action must be rescinded because such a pay hike would be in violation of a state law that limits board members to $50 a day for meeting attendance.
Now board members want to increase the pay for attending committee meetings from $25 to $50. With commissioners able to attend three committee meetings a month, plus a general board meeting that already pays $50, the monthly stipend could go from $100 to $200 per member.
Last week, the board’s executive committee voted 4 to 1 to recommend adoption of the pay raise, retroactive to July 1. If approved, the increase could boost the annual pay of the 15-member panel from a total of $18,000 to $36,000--among the highest pay of any housing authority in the state.
The Housing Authority board is made up of two representatives, plus one tenant commissioner, from each of the seven jurisdictions in the agency. Because so many jurisdictions are represented, the board is one of the largest in the state. And because of its size and the number of meetings it holds, it is also one of the most highly compensated.
By comparison, a survey conducted by the agency’s staff showed that Oxnard pays its seven Housing Authority board members--comprised of the five City Council members and two tenant commissioners--$30 a meeting while the seven members of the Ventura Housing Authority get paid $50 a meeting. Both agencies, however, meet only once a month and have no committee meetings.
San Diego pays its seven members nothing. The seven board members for housing authorities in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara can earn up to $100 a month.
The Ventura County board is expected to vote on increasing its pay next month.
Baby-Sitting Fees
In a related action, the board of the Colina Vista apartment complex in Piru--an independent body established by the county Housing Authority to oversee that project--voted last month to raise its meeting pay from $50 to $100. Five members of the Housing Authority board--Jaloma, Pfeifer, Garber, Soltow and Anderson--serve as Colina Vista board members. Most of them have served on the Housing Authority board since the late 1980s.
“It’s not really the compensation we’re here for. Nobody is here to make a dollar,” said Jaloma, who also is president of the Colina Vista board. “And perhaps they [board members] would do it for nothing. But how are you going to get people to provide their services on a long-term basis and not have it cost them any money?”
But fellow Commissioner Otto Stoll, chairman of the board’s finance committee and a pay raise opponent, said it is unnecessary and a public embarrassment to compensate commissioners beyond a nominal amount.
“I find the whole business of getting paid for this stuff distasteful,” said Stoll, a retired public relations consultant who has represented Thousand Oaks on the panel since 1994. “I don’t think the pay has anything to do with it, that’s not why you do this.”
Perhaps no spending decision has drawn more fire than the $290 bill submitted by board member Pfeifer for child-care expenses. According to agency records, Pfeifer billed the agency for 29 hours, at $10 an hour, for baby-sitting services for her two children while she attended meetings in August, September and October.
Although the bill she submitted said that her family-owned finance company, Regency Brokerage, provided the child care, Pfeifer said last week she paid someone--who she refused to identify--to watch her kids in her home, which doubles as her office. The business was reimbursed because it paid for the child care, she said.
Furthermore, Pfeifer said she billed for child care only after discovering that she was putting in 20 hours a month on agency business for a position advertised as requiring two hours a month. And she said she did so only after clearing it with the federal department of Housing and Urban Development.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous what all this has been made out to be,” said Pfeifer of reports that it was her husband who was paid to provide the child care. “I am the only commissioner with [young] children and I will continue to do that when necessary. I wish people could just concentrate on what we do for area housing, on the countless hours we spend trying to do some good for the community.”
HUD officials said while child-care expense can be reimbursed, they are taking a closer look at exactly how those costs were paid and who received the money.
Still, housing advocates and some elected officials say even if child care is a legitimate expense, they are outraged that any board member would bill the agency for it with housing dollars being as tight as they are.
Councilwoman Craven, who joined her fellow Camarillo council members in appointing Pfeifer to the board, said that perhaps the mother of two should be removed from that post.
“There are a lot of ways parents with children can participate in local government without this perception of impropriety,” Craven said. “People dealing with public money have to be very careful with that perception.”
Perception Is Key
Ultimately, whatever is ailing the Housing Authority board is more about perception than it is about any malfeasance, critics, board members and staff members agree. But they also say that valid questions have been raised that need to be answered. Just now, board members are starting to take a harder look at agency expenses.
And they have set out a series of issues to tackle in coming months, including an examination of the current meeting structure and a review of the practice of reimbursing board members for attending committee meetings, even if they are not members of the committee.
“We need to correct some of the errors that may be in some of our policies and take a look at different procedures,” said Anthony Bellasalma, a retired electric company worker and two-year member of the board. “We need to clear up some of these problems and get back on the road where we should be.”
Added Commissioner Stoll: “These are tax dollars. Whether they are federal dollars or local dollars, the public has a perfect right to know how each and every one of those is spent. If people don’t like what we’re doing, we’ll deal with it. But anyone who wants a job is welcome to it.”
