The Milpitas City Council voted last night to change the name of the Milpitas Library.
Effective immediately, the library will be named the “Milpitas Jose Esteves Library.”
Jose Esteves is a former Milpitas Councilmember and Mayor. He served one term as Councilmember from 1998-2002 and six terms as Mayor — from 2002-2008 and 2010-2016.
The vote last night was 4-1 in favor of the library being named after Esteves.
“Many years ago during the conception of a library for Milpitas, I remember Mayor Esteves to be the driving force behind its fruition,” Vice Mayor Evelyn Chua explained to The Beat.
Chua went on to share that Esteves’ work was instrumental to the library’s existence: he campaigned for Measures H and I in 2000, which provided for a hotel tax that, in part, was used to fund the new library project. Esteves also served as overall project lead on the Library Project Subcommittee from 2008 up until the library’s opening in 2009.
“Mayor Esteves’ effort, time, hard work, influence, commitment, and dedication deserve the recognition,” Vice Mayor Chua told The Beat. “He’s truly the champion of the Milpitas Library.”
Councilmember Hon Lien was the lone member of the Council who voted against the naming; she felt that the vote should be held after election time, so as not to be influenced by politics…
“This process is so flawed,” Councilmember Lien said in an interview with The Beat. “I feel like the community should have some say in this. This is the only library in our city. Why don’t we name it in a way that everyone is proud of?”
An Ad Hoc Naming Subcommittee, which Mayor Carmen Montano and Vice Mayor Chua sit on, met to review a list of potential names and decided to recommend Esteves for the library renaming. They did not put forward any additional names for consideration.
The Milpitas Library is operated by the Santa Clara County Library District, which serves nine cities across the county. Its name on the county’s website, social media, and marketing cannot be changed, so as to maintain consistency across all nine locations. But for Milpitas-only events that take place at the library, the new name will be used.
Officially, Milpitas Historical names extend to streets, parks, and facilities. The naming policy states that the individual whose name is used must have had a significant or extraordinary historical influence on the area.
The cost of changing the library signage is estimated to fall somewhere between $25,000 and $40,000. Although the name of the library has been formally changed, Deputy City Manager Matt Cano told the Council that no funding is currently available for the signage; City Staff would need to look for money to put the new name on the exterior.
“We do not currently have money and funds to actually put the new signage up on the outside of the library,” Cano told the Council.
Cano mentioned that the funding would need to be sorted out at the start of the next budget cycle in June 2025, but Councilmember Garry Barbadillo asked that funding sources be sought out sooner than that.
The Beat reached out to former Mayor Jose Esteves for this story. He responded, “I am most grateful and very honored. I’m always concerned about children’s growth in knowledge, excellent education, and of course their bright, promising future through the library, of which I was a strong and avid supporter.”
He added: “I always thought of this project as one of the best gifts and contributions to our children and the residents of Milpitas.”
Isn’t this the guy that called city employees “peons”, was fined for not disclosing and keeping proper records for campaign expenditures, lied about using his office as a “campaign headquarters” and didn’t it come into question during one of his many terms that he didn’t even live in Milpitas at some point while holding office.
Milpitas will continue to be a joke until it stops electing childish, petty, self-serving losers and wasting time and money it doesn’t have on honoring poor leaders that skated by due to specific voting demographics as opposed to actual accomplishments.
I did not reside in Milpitas during the time Jose Esteves served as mayor (nor do i know Mr. Esteves), but initiating the process of renaming the Milpitas library during an election year is high inappropriate.
While Mr. Esteves’s public service may be worthy of having the library renamed in his honor, not putting forward additional names for consideration was simply wrong. The lack of transparency in the renaming process is more troubling.
Lastly, finding the estimated $25,000-$40,000 to change the library signage when the public treasury is limited today, and expected to remain so in years to come, is foolish.
As a resident of Milpitas, I expect better from my elected leaders.
I would have nominated the late former Milpitas Mayor Denny Weisgerber for consideration. If we’re going to have to spend somewhere between $25,000 to $40,000 let’s at least make it a worthwhile use of funds.
Why is renaming something that affects the entire community not open for public voting? Is this not an option?
What is wrong with simply keeping the name Milpitas Library? The citizens should have decided this and told of the $40k cost. At least we know who jammed this through without a concern for the community’s opinion and is wasteful of money.
What a waste of time and money. Why don’t our leaders spend that money helping all of Milpitas. Like fixing the streets falling apart, having more patrol to stop red light runners and speeders. Just a plain waste.
I question Estevez’s statement “I’m always concerned about children’s growth in knowledge, excellent education” – didn’t he block the use of developer fees for schools for years?