Valentin Alexeeff
1948-2017
Born in 1948 in China to Russian immigrant parents, Alexeeff was raised in San Francisco. He moved to Contra Costa in 1979 to work as the zoning administrator in Antioch. He was both the planning director and the city manager of the city of Clayton, California, from 1985 to 1991, playing a major role in reviewing the 1,485-home Oakhurst Country Club development. From 1991 to 1998, Alexeeff served as Contra Costa’s director of growth management and economic development, a position created to coordinate the planning, public works, and building inspections departments. As director, he helped negotiate a legal settlement in 1994 that allowed the massive Dougherty Valley housing development to proceed in the San Ramon Valley. He also headed the county’s Institute of Policy and Innovation, developing ‘best practice models’ for Contra Costa County departments. Alexeeff also directed California planning and development departments in the counties of Santa Barbara (2003–2005) and Santa Clara (2005–2009) and served on a number of technical committees, including for the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Conservation Plan.
As a planner and manager, Alexeeff was known for his warm personality and his ability to lead and teach staff. “He’s strong on management, planning and development, and effectiveness of process, and he’s a good guy,” Santa Barbara County Administrator Michael Brown told the Lompoc Record in 2003. Blessed with a voracious appetite for learning, Alexeeff earned several degrees including a doctor of public administration from the University of Southern California; a master of public administration from the Kennedy School at Harvard University; a master of urban planning from the University of Washington, and a bachelor of arts in political science and Russian from San Francisco State University. Alexeeff was an emeritus member of the California Planning Roundtable, an organization to which he was elected in 1993. Alex Hinds, a fellow Roundtable member, remembers him as having a “quintessential Russian spirit that could not be contained. He could instantly pivot from roaring laughter to poignant tears.”