Mountain View City Council
September 16, 2025

1 September 16, 2025Comments for Agenda Item 2.2 Mountain View City Council Special Meeting, September 16, 2025 Mayor Ellen Kamei, Vice Mayer Ramos, and Mountain View City Council Members, It is my understanding that during closed session agenda item 2.2 the City Council will undertake a performance evaluation of the city attorney, city clerk, and city manager. I do not have the personal experience to comment on their performance individually but would like to share some observations about the organization as a whole. As at least some of you know I am in the initial stages of remodeling my house in the Monta Loma neighborhood. The house was built almost 75 years ago for veterans educated under the GI Bill and their families to work in the aerospace and nascent semiconductor industries that became Silicon Valley. In the process of working with the city to get my plans approved over the last four months, I have had the opportunity to interact with city staff as I work my way through the maze of city ordinances (which will be a subject of another letter in the future); not just the managers who I often speak with during city council meetings, but on the ground inspectors, office workers, and coordinators. I have able to have conversations with many of them about their work and get a sense on how they feel about their jobs. Everyone who I spoke to is very interesting, competent, and knowledgeable. However, I’ve noted that the staff are often ambivalent about the ordinancesthat are being asked to align or enforce with actual practice. Saying this differently, they often don’t believe the ordinances they are asked to apply do not make sense, are inconsistent, and/or just not necessary. I believe they want to do what is right, but are constrained by a process that they do not necessarily support. They seem to be doing their job without much passion or belief that they are working for a greater good. It seems more like they know what they are being asked to do is unnecessary, but that’s the ordinance, and they are just doing their job. 2 Now this work alienation happens everywhere including the law firm I work with, but that does not make it right. We can and should do much better and hold ourselves accountable. If nothing else, were are mis-using a lot of valuable resources and talent. Read “Bullshit Jobs” by David Graeber. In the end, I believe the attitude I witness reflects the management of the organization and is the responsibility of the senior staff and ultimately the city council. I can also see this alienation happen at a higher organizational level. Through attending many Park and Recreation Commission and other meetings I feel I have gotten to know the Park and Recreation Department Staff fairly well. Although beginning from an adversarial posture, I now know that the staff want the same things for Mountain View that I do, but they are constrained by finances and putative choices that they are not necessarily aligned with. I’m writing this letter in part because I know how difficult it is for policy makers to understand what employees of an organization are actually thinking about their work. I certainly can’t go around talking with school district employees and expect an honest answer, much less that it would be inappropriate for me to speak with them in the first place about work-related matters. I had the good fortune to work at AT&T/Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories for almost 20 years from 1982 through 1999. Everything you may have heard about it is true. It was a wonderful place to work. A large part of its success as an organization was due to the structure and the focus on excellence. When I was there, Bell Labs had about 1,500 scientists, mostly at Murray Hill, New Jersey, but also spread around the country at various manufacturing business units. Bell Labs had a flat organizational structure with only a couple of management levels above the laboratory research scientists to the president. The salaries increased with years of service but were within a narrow window and management salaries were not that much different than that of the staff scientists. There were very few technicians and support staff and technical staff members were prevented from having large groups. This flat organizational structure enabled the highly competitive researchers to focus on the science and not among each other (although that changed toward them end of my tenure). 3 We engaged in the tactless and often brutally honest type of interaction that is typical of the New York metropolitan area, but in the end nothing was personal and we knew it. The criticism was all about challenging each other to doing the best science possible and holding ourselves accountable to high standards of excellence. Bell Laboratories was a tremendously successful organization. I’m not saying that what worked for Bell Labs would work for the City of Mountain View, but I am saying there is a better way and that it is the city management’s responsibility to ensure that all levels of the organization are motivated, take pride in their work, and understand that they are making a positive difference to our community. Perhaps one way to do this is allow staff to be more a part of the process. Bill Lambert Mountain View Resident Monta Loma Neighborhood