Starbase, billionaire Elon Musk’s corporate town near Brownsville, has begun staffing up to create its own government.
Online job postings show the fledgling village of 500 — mostly SpaceX employees — is seeking a part-time municipal judge and a prosecutor.
According to public job postings, the City of Starbase intends to operate a “digital-first” municipal court to manage dockets, records and court workflows.
The part-time, as-needed municipal court judge would sit for a minimum of one court day monthly and handle ordinance violations and certain misdemeanor cases, according to its online listing. The judge also would have authority to issue warrants, subpoenas and court orders.
Candidates for the position are required to have “no professional or personal conflicts that would prevent fulfilment [sic] of judicial responsibilities,” the job posting states.
The City of Starbase officially incorporated in May 2025. Residents voted 212 to 6 in favor of incorporation, and the Cameron County Commissioners Court officially certified the results shortly thereafter.
“We congratulate Starbase, the new mayor and the new two city councilmen and wish them the absolute best. We look forward to working with them for the betterment not only of Starbase but of Cameron County, Texas,” County Judge Eddie Treviño said after the certification vote, according to a KUT report.
While certifying the results, the county commissioners stressed that they didn’t have the power to block the new city’s formation.
Only people who live in the immediate area were eligible to vote for the incorporation of Starbase. Almost all of them work for SpaceX, according to a Texas Newsroom analysis of the voter rolls.
Some of Starbase’s government officials are SpaceX employees, though not all.
City Clerk Gretchen Norton previously served as a contracted educator for Ad Astra School, an “experimental online middle school” at the Hawthorne, California SpaceX campus.
Bobby Peden, a SpaceX vice president in charge of testing and launching rockets, has served as Starbase’s inaugural mayor since its incorporation in May 2025.
Peden’s public LinkedIn comments over the years show his commitment to the company’s mission to take humans “to orbit, the moon and Mars.”
“Help us make humans a multiplanetary species!” Peden said in a 2021 recruitment post he made from SpaceX’s McGregor campus. He later relocated to Brownsville.
In July, former Army sergeant Glenn Bennett, previously a police lieutenant for the Central Texas town of Belton, became Starbase’s director of public safety and chief of police. According to Bennett’s LinkedIn posts, Starbase is looking to hire more sergeants and officers, who will drive a fleet of Cybertrucks, naturally.
“If you’re the kind of person who shows up ready to protect a community that’s literally building the future, this might be for you. Starbase isn’t a typical town,” Bennett said in a recruitment post this summer, shortly after his own hiring. “It’s the place where rockets are manufactured, tested and launched with increasing frequency. The people who live and work here are pushing the limits of what’s possible — and they deserve a police department that matches that energy.”
The tone of Bennett’s posts echoes the language of startup culture. And in a sense, this is a startup community.
“This isn’t about flashing lights for the sake of it. It’s about keeping the people who are making history safe so they can keep doing it,” Bennett’s post continues, indicating the precarious balance of enforcing the law in a town full of coworkers.
Starting pay for Starbase police officers starts at $90,000, with an additional $5,000 relocation reimbursement, according to Bennett’s post.
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