New Willacy County newspaper pushes back against plan to commercialize Port Mansfield

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas (ValleyCentral) — In 2004, when New York Times foreign correspondent Patrick Tyler retired, he settled in Port Mansfield.

“We thought we’d retire in Cuba, but Fidel would never die,” quipped Tyler, who reported from Beijing, Moscow and Baghdad during his career in journalism. “And so — looking at the same latitude — we came back to Texas.”

In June, however, Tyler re-entered the newspaper business after the Willacy County Navigation District announced plans to move commercial cargo through Port Mansfield.

Tyler and other Port Mansfield residents, concerned the plan would become costly for taxpayers and destroy the area’s natural beauty, urged the navigation district to reconsider.

Initially, they shared information on Facebook and created the Concerned Citizens of Port Mansfield, which sent an email newsletter to subscribers.

When the navigation district pressed forward with the project anyway, Tyler and other Port Mansfield residents decided to raise the alarm by creating a free newspaper called the Willacy County Examiner.

“Then we got the idea: Well, let’s just put out a one-sheet newspaper,” Tyler said. “And start writing stories about what’s happening here and educate the people in Raymondville about how off the rails this place is.”

They published the first edition, which contained seven news stories about the navigation district in June.

Headlines included “It’s a Sham -- No Jobs and No Customers For Port Mansfield Container Port” and “Container Port Threatens Laguna Madre Fishery.”

It also reported that Chad Kinney, the chairman of the navigation district board, was a “convicted felon” who pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana in the 1990s.

“All this is something very, very minor and it’s expunged,” Kinney said. “And I thought it was gone 30 years ago.”

Kinney declined to discuss the details.

“The Willacy County Examiner is bringing the news and the facts behind the news to county residents who have been kept in the dark,” according to an article in the June 2024 edition. “Look for future issues of the Examiner! Let the sun shine in!”

Port Director Ron Mills, who runs the navigation district, called the newspaper “scarily inaccurate.”

“He’ll throw one or two pieces of fact in there,” Mills said. “But it’ll turn into a massive story of misinformation.”

Mills said the newspaper suggests Port Mansfield residents, who lease property from the navigation district, could acquire the land if Port Mansfield became a city.

“They’re not going to be entitled to the lands anyway because we’re a navigation district — and we own the lands,” Mills said. “They can come and put the municipality on top of it, theoretically, which — we can’t say anything about that. They can certainly do that. But what’s going to happen to us? We’re not going anywhere. We were created by the legislature and the legislature is the only thing that can make us go away.”

Kinney, the board chairman, also had concerns about the newspaper.

“Some of it has some truth,” Kinney said, but he says a lot of the information is simply lies.

In an attempt to correct the record, Kinney and Mills said the navigation district may hire a public relations firm and start publishing information online.

“Maybe a non-biased PR firm to look at us, as far as the Navigation District, and everything else and put the true, legal aspects out there of what’s going on or what’s happening,” Kinney said. “Instead of all this false accusation crap.”