PORT MANSFIELD, Texas - Port Mansfield, a sleepy community with more than 300 permanent residents, is awakening as voters will decide its future late this year.
At stake is the issue to incorporate and separate the town from the Willacy County Navigation District and create a new municipality similar to what happened 100 miles to the south where less than 200 people voted in favor of Starbase.
But here in this sparsely populated county in the Rio Grande Valley, a dispute has been going on between a group which has dubbed itself as Concerned Citizens of Port Mansfield and some navigation district officials.
In particularly, they have been targeting the port director, Ron Mills, a person they like to compare to a dictator because of his handling of the district.
CCPM members are now expressing optimism that luck is in their favor after Willacy County Judge Aurelio “Keter” Guerra approved an order of election on Aug 14, 2025, to conduct the election of incorporation in Port Mansfield on Nov.4.
The judge said the petition filed fulfilled all the requirements so he approved the order.
In a brief interview held before the last board meeting in August, Mills said he did not think the incorporation will be taking place.
Back in May, the CCPM held a town meeting at the local chamber of commerce attended by about 100 people.
Pat Tyler, a journalist from Missouri who worked for the Washington Post and the New York Times and who resides in PM, has been spearheading the movement.
The meeting program covered taxation, a petition on incorporation, the possibility of shrinking the five-member WCND, the risk of doing nothing and the status of a May 6, 2024, petition to hold a municipal election.
During his talk, Tyler spoke extensively about the financial state of affairs of the navigation district with the help of charts.
There were also brief remarks made by number of CCPM members, including Richard Lefebre, Jack Ficklen, Bart and Hil Culpepper.
Tyler made reference to a paragraph of the program presentation, which read, “We will have a great deal of evidence to show the Legislature that the navigation district has failed to meet the standards and expectations to which it was created and has proven itself to secretive and corrupt practices as witnessed in the indictment of Former Port Director David Mayfield in the 1990s and, more recently, in the attempt by Port Director Ron Mills to turn over Port Mansfield for 50 years to an allegedly corrupt firm, whose contract was terminated in less than a year.”
One of the comments was in reference to the ambitious project the district has tried to turn the port into a commercial hub to handle containers.
The district signed a 50-year lease agreement with a company named North American Standard but it ended the contract after the company failed to pay $300,000 at the end of 2024.
The Nov. 4 election will put to test the CCPM stand to incorporate Port Mansfield.
Although they are all gung-ho about it there are several things to consider.
A Port Mansfield resident said the navigation district has its own water and waste water treatment plant.
If the town becomes incorporated, the townspeople could buy those services from the district.
Another issue involves taxes.
Would the new town pay taxes just to itself or to the district as well?
How many eligible registered voters Port Mansfield has and how many people actually live there?
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 310 people and 31 families residing in Port Mansfield.
Some of the people regularly seen in town are permanent residents while others live or own houses elsewhere else but the district is the landlord.
Cristina Rodriguez, the county election administrator, said a voter is required to submit a sworn affidavit confirming his or her address.
In conversations on social media, some CCPM members are saying a person can state he or she lives in Port Mansfield before the Nov. 4 election and change the address afterwards.
The deadline to register with the county election administrator in Raymondville for the three seats on proposed incorporation of Port Mansfield is this Sept. 3.
