Oak Harbor officials discovered in March that a former Senior Center employee misappropriated about $34,000 in public funds over a four-year period, according to the state Auditor’s Office.

In addition, the auditor found problems with how the police department oversees assets, manages citations and monitors investigative funds.

A “fraud investigative report” was released this week by the State Auditor. It outlines possible criminal allegations as well as weaknesses in internal controls at the senior center, a city department, that failed to adequately safeguard public funds.

Oak Harbor Mayor Bob Severns said he couldn’t discuss the details of the report since the investigation may not be over. He said auditors will forward the report to the Island County prosecutor for possible criminal charges.

Severns said the weaknesses in policies related to the oversight of senior center travel program funds have been corrected.

The report states that the new senior center administrator discovered that the center, a city department, was not receiving the expected amount of travel agency commission related to its travel program for seniors. She found emails in which the senior center’s travel coordinator asked private travel agencies to apply commission revenue to the cost of her personal participation in the trips, the report states.

The senior center administrator met with the travel coordinator, who confessed that she realized she was using city money for personal trips, according to the report. The travel coordinator retired at the end of March.

The travel coordinator used $31,000 in city money to fund nine trips to such places as Ireland and Italy from 2012 to 2016, the auditor found.

In addition, a total of $2,500 in wages was inappropriately paid to the travel coordinator during some of the trips.

An investigation to determine if additional misappropriations occurred did not identify anything, though the Auditor’s Office determined that control deficiencies made it difficult to determine if that happened, the report states.

The report identified a series of weaknesses in the city controls over the travel program. The city, for example, didn’t establish independent oversight of the commission revenues from travel agencies and had no detailed contracts with the travel agencies outlining the amounts the city should receive.

The Auditor’s Office recommended that the city recover $34,000 from the former travel coordinator and related investigative costs of $5,000. Any compromise or settlement must be approved in writing by the auditor and state attorney general.

The Auditor’s Office didn’t released any official “findings” on the city in the annual accountability audit released earlier this year, but it did issue a management letter related to the police department. The letter outlined a list of concerns.

The audit found the department wasn’t adequately tracking smaller, “attractive” items such as Tasers, body armor and riot shields; didn’t have inadequate segregation of duties between the purchasing, tracking and surplus of firearms; wasn’t completing monthly audits of citations books or reporting the information to appropriate agencies as required by law; and a city process does not ensure it receives all revenues from the $40 booking fee, the letter states.

In addition, the auditor found that the city doesn’t have a written policy on the use of investigative or confidential funds and doesn’t adequately review the use of the money.