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Published on 03/02/1998 All articles from this issue

Quitting time for this 'CEO'

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Town Crier Staff Writer

City Manager Dianne Gershuny leaves with Los Altos in good shape

n Friday the 13th, the city of Los Altos loses its CEO. Dianne Gershuny, who has been city manager for eight years, presiding over a staff of 120 and a budget of $14.5 million, will be retiring.

But she's not retiring in the traditional sense. She's 45 and has another five years before she's even eligible for her pension.

Instead, she's planning a career in culinary arts. She said her plans aren't specific, but "I've had a business plan for a dessert shop for 20 years. And I've had a sourdough starter going since college."

When she came to Los Altos she told the council that she would stay five years. "I've stayed here a lot longer than I anticipated," she said.

"I don't like to say 'never' to anything, but I don't expect to be a city manager again."

Perhaps it's telling that she submitted her resignation last October just days after her 45th birthday. "There's time to do more than one thing in life," she said.

Gershuny 's legacy

Gershuny leaves the city in extraordinary shape. Thirteen years ago, Los Altos was operating in the red. Today there is a surplus of $1.13 million in city coffers, which the council will soon be deciding how to spend.

Mayor Kris Casto said Gershuny "has led the city on a road of financial stability. She has given good advice."

City Councilman King Lear echoes these sentiments.

After a study session when the council discussed ways to spend the $1.13 windfall, he said, "I have a high respect for the job she's done on city finances. I'm extremely proud of our city's financial planning and financial management. And Dianne's responsible for a large part of it."

Gershuny came to Los Altos as director of finance in 1987. She moved the city into a two-year budget cycle. The first budget she prepared for the city won a state award.

Her director of finance, Sherry Lambach, whom Gershuny promoted to the position, has continued the tradition. Every budget Lambach has prepared has won both a state and national award.

They've spent many late nights together at city hall working on budgets and financial reports.

Gershuny, who studied ballet at the time she came, would get up for a stretch from the computer, and "do ballet pirouettes down the hall," Lambach said.

Gershuny follows a simple principle: don't spend more than you have. And she does not allow her department heads to go over budget.

If you do, "you damn well better have a good reason," Lambach said.

This frugal approach has stood the city in good stead. It has allowed Los Altos to be able to step forward and make some significant land purchases when the opportunities presented.

In 1995 the city bought the corner at First and Main streets where Kentucky Fried Chicken used to be. Now a furniture consignment store is there.

In 1996 Los Altos was able to buy the 5.5-acre former St. William school parcel at 401 Rosita Ave. for future city recreation use.

These purchases were possible even during lean times for Los Altos. In the early 1990s, property values were declining, engineers were unemployed and the city suffered from state "take-aways" that cut city income.

Yet the city never laid off any employees and always operated in the black.

Some have criticized Gershuny's style as being micro-managing.

Her staff does not agree.

"She delegates very well to department heads," Lambach said, "and expects them to run their departments. She's always more into the big picture."

Soon after Gershuny hired Lucy Carlton to be police chief, the two of them attended a training class together for improving communications between city managers and police chiefs.

"First, the people there had never seen a female/female team," Carlton said.

"And second, we had no communication issues. We were so far out of the stereotype, we broke the mold. In fact, other police chiefs and city managers were envious that we could talk so openly. We showed them how it could be done."

Gershuny considers her best business decision as city manager to have been "very controversial." After years of study by citizen task forces, she recommended that the city contract out fire services to the Santa Clara County Fire Department. That meant the dissolution of the local fire department.

The new regime began Dec. 30, 1996.

She describes the change as "seamless" to most citizens, "yet we are spending less and have first-responder paramedic service. The latter is extremely important in a town where the average age is so high."

A personal life

One of the tough parts of being a city manager is the lack of a personal life.

Gershuny arrived in Los Altos as a single career woman. Now she's a married mom.

Here she met and fell in love with a local attorney, Ken Kaye, a father with two small children, who had lost his wife to complications from a brain tumor.

Gershuny said it was tough dating in a fish bowl. "People thought it was a little bit cute."

After two years of courtship, Kaye and his two children, Eva and Aaron, who are now 16 and 15, "all three proposed together. We all went over, went down on one knee," and asked to marry Gershuny.

Four months later, in November 1992, they were married. He sold his house, she sold her house and together, all four of them, bought their Los Altos home.

Recently the family gathered in the kitchen while Eva fixed Dijon chicken and baked potatoes for the 15 homeless people in the Alpha Omega homeless shelter as part of her school key club activities.

Eva said at Los Altos High School, where she is a junior, parents talk to her about the city, particularly about trash pick-up.

She shifts her voice into an adult tone. "'We had too much stuff in our recycling bin and they didn't pick it up, Eva. What do I do?' " she said mimicking a high school parent.

"Look it up in your manual," she advised them, shifting back into a teen-girl voice.

"'I've lost my manual. How do I get another one?'" they ask Eva.

Aaron doesn't get the same questions.

"Most people don't have any idea mom is city manager," he said, because they have different last names.

Gershuny glows when she talks about her kids.

"I can do this because I'm a stepmother. I can say they're both 4.0 students. I brag about them all the time since so many complain about their stepchildren."

Gershuny grew up in Southern California. She earned a bachelor's degree at the University of California at Berkeley, with a major in neurobiology. Then she earned a master's in business administration at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Kaye said that when they married, Gershuny, who is a gourmet cook, "thought aha - she's got four people to cook for. Instead, she got a husband with very plebeian tastes and kids with very juvenile tastes. When she discovered this, she changed her expectations and made macaroni and cheese."

But, "They said it was better than Kraft," Gershuny said. "Now when other kids are ordering burgers, Eva orders salmon buerre blanc."

In the Kaye/Gershuny living room, on top of the piano, perches an unfinished length of 2-by-4 pine. A long nail pins squares of paper, with numbers, to the board.

"My kids made this," Gershuny pointed. No. 15 was showing that day. "That's how many days I have left as city manager." Each day one of them tears off another number.

Now No. 3 would be on top.

The final days

At city hall, Gershuny's colleagues brace for her final day.

"She's taught me a tremendous amount, especially on the finance end," said Layne Long, assistant to the city manager.

"And by the person she is. Honesty. Ethics. Values. Those are paramount with her. And she expects that from someone who works with her."

Gershuny loved her job, especially "the opportunity to work for positive change with people who really care about the community."

She said she won't miss the 2 a.m. city council meetings. But she carries with her what she calls her most important lesson learned.

"There are about 28,000 people in Los Altos and at least that many opinions on every issue. And every single one of them is right."