Nice story on Kevin Duggan. We will all miss him. As a school board member in the 90's I appreciated his willingness to collaborate with the high schools. He and Rich Fischer made a dynamic duo.

Would he be consulting after he retires at a rate of $500 an hour? Somehow I didn't see that line in the article. Is that missing or deliberately omitted for fear of criticism? Because it is a customary thing in our capitalistic and free market thinking culture to reward someone with tons and tons of money.

Thank you, Kevin Duggan, for such a good long ride!! The city of Mtn. View can finally hold it's head high because of you and your fine works,,

His retirement date is set so that he can return on temporary hourly duty and run out the rest of 2011 on the taxpayers time and double dip from the city--just like all the other "irreplaceable" top-dollar city administrators who retired last year. What do you expect? He's the one that set the system up, approved it and now must take advantage of it. It's convenient how the Voice ignore the deep ditch that public servants such as Duggan put the state of California in. We'll be paying for his retirement package for years with higher taxes and less and more expensive city services. Any one care to step up and challenge that?

@Realist: "just like all the other "irreplaceable" top-dollar city administrators who retired last year"

Except Cathy Lazarus.

End of an era indeed! It's the end of the inflated public employee salaries and pensions that have come close to bankrupting the state!

The Voice should try to put things in perspective.

Duggan will quietly slip away while MV is on the hook for paying millions toward his golden retirement for years to come.

Some end to an era. More like an end to the era of sky high salaries!

Boy I would just love to retire at age 60 with the taxpayers footing the bill! Read on:

Based on 2009 total wages subject to Medicare taxes, salaries in Mountain View ranged from $6,067 for the mayor and City Council members—the lowest paid—to $270,136 for City Manager Kevin Duggan. As a comparison, city managers in neighboring Palo Alto and Milpitas—similarly sized-cities—earned $260,614 and $207,801, respectively, in 2009.

In 2009, City Attorney Jannie Quinn received wages that totaled $255,405, while Police Chief Scott Vermeer —who also served as acting fire chief—reported a wage of $287,834, the highest of all Mountain View public employees. Fire Chief Bradley Wardle, who joined the Mountain View Fire Department in 2010, was hired at a salary of $190,000.

Mountain View, compared with its neighbors in Palo Alto and Milpitas, paid more for these positions in 2009; however, the salary range—the minimum and maximum—of compensation was similar.

Hello folks, you and your elected officials voted for pensions, salaries, etc. Stop harassing these fine workers on their way out the door. They did not "set-up" the system, you did. Get out and vote. Stop throwing around insults behind the anonymous safety of the internet.

While Vermeer was both Police Chief and acting Fire Chief, I'm sure he got by on way less sleep and downtime than most of us. Being on-call 24/7 can be draining, even when the phone does not ring. We can pay less in public sector compensation, and when our economy rebounds, we'll get less in terms of the quality of personnel and service. After all, the whole reason for these higher pensions is a state law that was changed back during .boom, when cities and counties could not fill vacant positions. Now we'll change the system again and the cycle will repeat. Public services funded almost exclusively with volatile sales and income taxes will always be inherently unstable. If you want lower cost government, just vote for fewer city services.

We voted for these pensions? Sorry, you're wrong. We voted for politicians to act responsibly with our money. Meanwhile city management worked with unions to "negotiate" their wages higher and higher which they then sold to the city council as legitimate when in fact it was all rigged. And now look at the state we're in!

This rash of retirements is nothing more that a strategy to hang on to them before the state comes in and voids them all.

Our city manager has been responsible with the operations of the city. Considering that he has much more experience than the 'comparison cities' managers, a slightly higher salary is easily understandable. Did any of you realize that he cut his own salary? Or that his management office has the highest percentage reductions of any city department? The new assistant city manager is a combined position - one less administrator position due to Mr. Duggan's management style. City manager is a full time position - look at what some of the state board appointment position pay for much less work (or CEOs get relative to their average workers).
Get on the city council to find a LOCAL replacement ASAP - and their won't be any need for a 'nation-wide' search or problems with dislocations, long commutes, interim managers, or double-dip consulting.