Texans will vote for whether to vote a community on one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX websites into an official city called Starbase.
Residents in the area near Boca Chica Beach will go to the polls to vote with a measure that will incorporate it into the community and call it Starbase in honor of the billionaire Rockets. If passed, the measure would empower the company on a piece of land along the Gulf Coast.
As of Saturday morning, about two-thirds of those 300 people who were eligible to vote, most of whom were SpaceX employees, had voted, according to Cameron County records.
independent Contacted SpaceX for comment.
South Texans will vote on whether to include the location of the SpaceX launch site in a formal city called Starbase (Getty Images).
According to records, only 10 of the 247 residential lots the community seeks to merge is not owned by SpaceX or its employees.
Late last year, a petition was filed to make the 1.5 square mile area a new municipality. The name will give the district its own governing body, emergency services and school district, ABC News reported.
According to the county’s 2024 annual report, SpaceX brings more than 3,400 jobs to the region, thus promoting the economy in areas where one quarter of its residents live in poverty.
“We need to be able to develop Starbase as a community into a community,” SpaceX’s general manager of the Constellation Kathryn Lueders wrote in a December 2024 letter to the county judge.
Some critics cite environmental issues that should control nearby public beaches (Getty Images)
Leuders noted that SpaceX “currently performs several civil functions around Starbase… including roads to residents, management of utilities, and providing education and medical services to residents.”
Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr.
Like the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, critics have cited environmental issues to see if the region should be included in the region. The group warned that the beach’s “will be threatened if SpaceX gains control over the area.”
Christopher Basaldú, co-founder of the group, told Washington Post He used to go to the beach when he was a child. “These are all original, beautiful lands, for example, literally, gems or treasures of beautiful beaches, and sacred lands of the original indigenous people of the land,” he said. “I have no confidence in SpaceX being a responsible neighbor just because it is officially a city. In fact, I think it will get worse.”
The group will hold protests on the beach ahead of the polls on Saturday to express its opposition to Starbucks’ proposed establishment.
