First reactions to Starbase City incorporation

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (ValleyCentral) — Starbase, Texas is a go.

Early voting results are in and Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza said, “It’s officially statistically impossible for the measure to fail.”

ValleyCentral reporter Jorge Vela was live from Starbase Saturday to bring us the latest.

He said there was no celebrations and no car honking, but there was a large voter turnout Saturday with more than one hundred and twenty people casting their ballot.

John Boyd, The Boyd Company Inc. Principal and Economic Development Expert, said, “Incorporating Starbase will not only keep the gateway to Mars open, it'll make that gateway much bigger.”

Boyd says incorporating the city has been something that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been trying to do for some time now.

He expects more housing, hospitals, and schools to be in the works soon.

“I think it could be, you know, within the next 18 months or so, you'll begin seeing real brick and mortar results, perhaps even faster," Boyd said. "We expect that turnout, or we expect the vote to be as high as 90%, is what a lot of projections are on Saturday. And a lot of planning, I'm sure, has already been done, so fortunately, Texas is a place where things get done sooner rather than later.”

Unofficial election results show more than 90% of Starbase voters voted in favor of the measure.

However, not everyone is for the incorporation. A protest was held at Boca Chica Beach earlier Saturday with demonstrators concerned about its future.

Christopher Basladu with the South Texas Environmental Network calls the election undemocratic.

“They are cowards and they are weaklings," Basladu said. "They'd rather get paid under the table, anything that SpaceX wants to give them, just so they can have an excuse to give SpaceX what they want. They are not our leaders, and we shouldn’t think of it that way. They may try to maneuver and manipulate the leaders of authority, but that doesn’t mean they are.”

Basaldu hopes people unite and petition to rescind the results.

Bobby Peden was elected as mayor along with Jenna Petrzelka and Jordan Buss as commissioners. All three ran unopposed and have longstanding connections with SpaceX.

Beach goers like Rene Medrano hope for a compromise. He and his friends have been told in the past to leave the beach due to SpaceX testing and he's hoping Saturday's election will change that.

“It would be one thing had they known about the testing, and they know about those things, and let people do their plans, but just to come out here and do your thing, and all of a sudden they say you have to leave is not right," Medrano, a Brownsville resident, said. "We need to have schedules, we need to have a compromise. We need people willing to work together, that is what we need to have.”

After the election is certified in about two weeks, then the county judge will sign an order declaring the results and making the incorporation official.