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The town of Danville will soon be operating without one of its key players for the first time since shortly after its incorporation in 1983, with Town Manager Joe Calabrigo retiring next week after 32 years on the job and even longer with the organization.
Calabrigo first came on board as a consultant with the town in 1984 – one year after its incorporation – after working briefly on a local project and becoming acquainted with then planning director Carol Johnson.
“They were playing catchup on a lot of things, and one of the things that they were trying to do was complete a specific plan for the Sycamore Valley, so they needed a contract planner,” Calabrigo told DanvilleSanRamon in exclusive interview this month. “So I put together a proposal and came to work for the town as a consultant. So for that first year between the end of ’84 and the beginning of ’85 I was just focused on doing the specific plan.”
The Sycamore Valley Specific Plan was developed with the goals of preserving open space as ranching land, creating trails for public access and recreation, native wildlife conservation, and minimizing wildfire risks to homes while planning for the development of approximately 1,850 homes on approximately 2,000 acres.
“As a planner there was some fun stuff there, because we were doing density transfers, preserving the ridgelines and hillsides, and putting together an assessment district to pay for all these improvements – everything from widening the freeway overpass to providing for a community park and a school, all of that. And there it was all condensed into a single year,” Calabrigo said.
The plan was approved in 1985, along with the associated assessment district and residential developments.
“I had the opportunity then to not only put together a consultant team to do the plan, but then also work to shepherd the plan through the process with the Planning Commission and the Town Council – so I had the opportunity to work with the very first Planning Commission, and the very first Town Council,” he recalled.
With the Sycamore Valley Specific Plan – among the first major plans developed and put into place following its incorporation – Calabrigo had already cemented himself as a major figure in the town’s history and ongoing development. But it wasn’t until Sept. 1, 1985, after throwing his hat in the ring as the town’s next planning director, that Calabrigo officially joined the town staff.
“I had the opportunity to work with a couple of my predecessors who were really very bright, talented people, both of them mentors to me among others,” Calabrigo said. “And the planning part of it – you know, once a planner, always a planner – being here at the ground floor, where we have been able to put a lot of things in place, whether they are general plans or master plans or ordinances or design guidelines. A lot of those things still exist in some way shape or form, and have really kind of guided how the town has grown and changed.”
Unlike its neighbors to the south – San Ramon and Dublin – Danville has seen modest and gradual population growth in the decades since its incorporation, with residents and town officials continuing to prioritize retention of its small-town character and open spaces. While some things have inevitably changed in the 40 years since Calabrigo was hired as head of the planning department, others have stayed the same.Â
“It has always been a community that has been very engaged, right from the get-go, whether I’m dealing with Danville in 1985 or Danville in 2025,” Calabrigo said. “Folks that were moving into town in 1985 would basically tell me – and I’m paraphrasing – ‘We moved here because we like what the community is. It’s a special place, don’t change it.’ And 40 years later, people are moving into town and telling us the same thing.”
In addition to the approval of new residents, Calabrigo said that he has valued the opinions of former councilmembers who have since retired from their posts.
“From time to time, having the opportunity to talk to some of those councilmembers that were our first councilmembers, and just the sense from them that they’re pleased with what their efforts have yielded – the fact that we’ve remained pretty true to the cause, if you will,” Calabrigo said.
In describing priorities for the town, past and present officials often point to the “Four Ps” — planning, police, pavement and parks. The vision for natural and historic preservation, and slow growth, in Danville came to hinge more and more on Calabrigo as he rose in rank with the town and absorbed knowledge from his predecessors and colleagues.
“I never necessarily saw myself doing anything other than planning,” Calabrigo said. “And then, after I had been here for a while, I worked for a couple of managers that were really mentors to me. The second manager in particular, George Sipel, I think saw the potential in me and took the opportunity to sort of expose me to different parts of the organization.”
Those opportunities included Calabrigo being assigned to lead the creation of the town’s transportation department, then being assigned to administrative, human resources, and finance tasks in the spirit of the “lean and adaptable” model that town staff were operating under, as well as being exposed to the operations of the police and parks and recreation departments.
“So the skill set was getting rounded out, and I was starting to think in terms of a career in city management, and when he departed it created that opportunity for me to be considered and to move into that role here,” Calabrigo said.
The rest will be history as of Monday (June 30), when Calabrigo’s 32-year tenure as town manager – Danville’s third-ever in the course of its 42 years of incorporation – comes to an end and assistant town manager Tai Williams begins her tenure at the top.
“I’m not running away from anything, but I’ve always shared with the council the fact that succession planning is really, really important in an organization like this one. Because we’re not a PERS organization, you can’t just go out and steal somebody from a PERS agency and bring them in here mid-career because it doesn’t always translate,” Calabrigo said.
Danville is the only Tri-Valley community that does not participate in the California Public Employees Retirement System, with the cities of San Ramon, Dublin, Pleasanton and Livermore all contracting with the state agency to provide retirement benefits for their employees.
That’s just one of multiple reasons Calabrigo said could be behind the relatively high turnover in other city manager positions in the region compared with Danville.
“Ever since I’ve been doing this job, the sort of rote rule of thumb has always been with city managers, four to five years is about the life expectancy,” Calabrigo said. “And I have known a lot of my colleagues over the years, and I’ve talked to them about what it is that contributes to that. A lot of it is the political paradigm that you’re operating in – so how many times have we seen ‘well, a new city council got elected, and they want to pick their own city manager, so goodbye old manager and hello, new one.'”
“I’d say that one of the things that’s been different about Danville is that it’s been very politically stable for a long, long time,” he continued.
Although Calabrigo’s more than three decades makes him the longest-serving manager of a Tri-Valley community by far, he noted that the state record goes to former Lakewood City Manager Howard Chambers, who retired in 2017 after 42 years on the job.
“In 42 years, he had had a grand total of 17 city council members,” Calabrigo said. “So what does that tell you? Well it tells you it’s a very stable council, that there’s not a lot of turnover. And so among the ranks of the managers, political stability is number one on the list of length of stay.”
Another major factor in manager tenure, Calabrigo said, is the challenges facing a given community, the nature of those challenges, and the manager’s interest in contending with them.
“I don’t know that unicorn is the word that I would choose, but my circumstances are pretty unique,” Calabrigo said. “I think I’ve always sort of operated in a world where I’ve understood that, while it’s nice to get positive reinforcement from people, I’m only as good as the job that I’m doing today and the job that I’m going to do tomorrow.”
“There’s no resting on laurels, but I think that one of the things that I’ve enjoyed so much about being here is the challenges have changed, and they’ve been different every single year,” he added.
Letting go of those challenges and the desire to contend with them is one of the hardest parts of his pending retirement, Calabrigo said, but a variety of factors – including the 40-year mark of his total tenure with the town in September – point towards it being the right move this year.
New and ongoing challenges and solutions now await Williams once she takes the wheel as Danville’s fourth-ever town manager on Tuesday (July 1).
“It’s a good time for me to go, and my successor – you know, it’s her time,” Calabrigo said. “She’s going to be great at this job, and she’ll do some great things that I never did.”
