BROWNSVILLE — The Cameron County Department of Elections and Voter Registration wants residents to show they are vote-ready.
At the regular meeting of the Cameron County Commissioners Court yesterday morning, Elections Administrator Remi Garza said his department will be coordinating two projects to raise voter registration awareness.
“Right now, we have 192,000 voters registered in the county. … We expect this number to increase significantly as we get closer to November,” Garza said. “My goal is to have 200,000 voters registered (by election time).”
The two events include “Outreach at the Beach” on Sept. 5 and “The Registration Connection” on Sept. 27. The first will be held at all county parks and the latter will be held at all county buildings.
“We hope that while people are at the beach (or doing county business) they will take the time to make sure their registration status is right,” Garza said. “They’ll also be able to get information and ask questions about the election.”
The department will ask people to promote the event, called Project #IAMVOTEREADY, on social media.
Garza said the department will be spending more than $9,000 on personnel to make sure everything runs smoothly in November.
County commissioners also determined two dates for a public hearing about the county tax-rate: Aug. 23 at the regular meeting time and Sept. 6 at 5:30 p.m. Both hearings will be held at the Dancy Building.
Deputy County Administrator Javier Villarreal proposed raising the tax rate by a penny, which would earn the county an additional $500,000 in revenue.
The current Cameron County tax rate is 0.399291 cents per $100 valuation.
