As chief executive officer of San Marcos-based DWG Consultants, a five-person firm he founded in 2001, Darrell Gentry is a master of the infrastructure upon which a healthy city depends.

Though many civic luminaries seek fame and statues raised in their honor, a statue is nothing without a pedestal -- and Gentry excels at building pedestals.

Gentry, who demurs when asked his age, graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with an emphasis in public administration in 1978, so he's about something-something.

He has spent his life planning, developing and managing the public spaces local residents live, work and play in ever since.

"I like all of it," he said in a phone interview recently. "Even the frustrations that can occur in the land development business. It's the creativity of achieving a project that gets built."

Over the course of more than 20 years as city manager, planning commissioner, director of planning and City Council member for San Marcos, Gentry has built a wealth of experience in the fine art of getting things done -- no small feat, given the regulatory and political minefields he must tread.

"Our task generally is to help (clients) focus on what their vision should be," he said.

At the same time, Gentry works in the cauldron of mediation to probe the thought processes of groups, such as neighborhood associations, that are affected by his clients' proposals, find out what it is they value, and search for common ground on behalf of his clients.

"(Core values) vary from community to community, and sometimes even within neighborhoods in a community," Gentry said. "They get articulated in a variety of ways, but most commonly through neighborhood workshops."

In the workshops, Gentry's emphasis is on listening.

"No matter what kind of opinions they may be, we allow for a free exchange without argument and heated debate, or mean-spiritedness." Gentry said.

Sometimes, a majority will have its mind made up before Gentry enters the picture.

"We'll write it down on a blackboard, make it very black and white," he said, "so that everyone in the room sees, reads and has the opportunity to digest it -- and we draw out their opinions and everyone gets heard."

But for all the solicitousness and good will brought into any negotiation by those involved in it, deep divisions of opinion remain a fact of life.

"We don't necessarily try to make it perfect for everybody," Gentry said. "That would be unrealistic, quite frankly -- sometimes you just have to leave it out there as the reality statement and the conclusion (that it points to)."

He recalled a client's recent annexation proposal and the response it drew from homeowners.

"They didn't want to join the city," he said, "even though the net result of the annexation would mean very little change of circumstances for anyone. It wouldn't change their property tax, it wouldn't change their services. Ö It was just a perception that annexation somehow wasn't of value to them."

Such irrationalities are the hard nubs Gentry often must work around.

"It's almost like asking someone their opinion about weather, religion or traffic," he said. "You just have to deal with the reality -- (though) in that particular workshop case, the outcome was (still) valuable to our client."

He is guardedly optimistic about another project -- a hotel upgrade in Imperial Beach.

"We're getting closer and closer to a project that I think everyone will accept," he said, wryly adding, "Even the Coastal Commission ultimately may be pleased."

That famously zealous guardian of California's shores is only the most visible example of the regulatory forces that Gentry says have run riot here.

"So many regulations are overlapping in terms of (the) jurisdictions that you have to go through to get permits processed," he said. "We're extremely overregulated."

Which leads to another hard nub -- the tendency of bureaucracies to measure their own effectiveness in terms of the quantity of new regulations they produce. How is it possible to stop that sort of dynamic?

"That's a damn good question," laughed Gentry. "If I had the answer, I would probably be sitting in the governor's chair."