New county annex building open for business

HARLINGEN — The new Cameron County annex building at 3304 Wilson Road will open today for business, Tax Assessor-Collector Tony Yzaguirre said.

“We closed the old tax office (on Harrison Avenue) and moved to the new building on Monday and” Tuesday, Yzaguirre said.

The new building will offer faster service for county residents who wish to handle auto title and license transactions, pay property taxes or handle other business with his office, the sheriff’s office, the courts of Justices of the Peace Sallie Gonzalez or David Wise or constables, Yzaguirre said.

His new Harlingen office has three drive-up windows, compared with only one at the old building on Harrison Avenue, Yzaguirre said.

County offices have already been up and running for about 30 days at the former Levi’s factory at the corner of the northbound Expressway 77/83 frontage road and Oscar Williams Road in San Benito, said District Clerk Aurora de la Garza. Her department was the first to move into the building, having moved their records storage operation there two years ago, she said.

Yzaguirre’s office will offer auto license renewal, title transfers and property tax service at the Harlingen and San Benito buildings, he said.

The Harlingen building is the fourth new facility his department has moved into in the past year, he said. The Levi’s building, the new county building at Port Isabel and a move across the hall into the former Elections Department office are the other three new facilities, he said.

At the Harlingen annex, which is across the street from Gutierrez Middle School on the corner of Wilson Road and Hand Road, one of three drive-up windows will handle auto license plate sales. The other two windows have tube-style mechanisms to transfer documents, checks and cash like a drive-in bank, he said.

Auto title transfers must be done indoors because that is a more time-consuming transaction, Yzaguirre said. His office will be reorganized with separate sections for auto transactions and property tax payments, he said. As at the old building, there will be a separate window for auto dealer transactions.

“We will still have auto sticker renewal at all H-E-B supermarkets in Cameron County,” Yzaguirre said.

“I’m happy with the new building,” Yzaguirre said of the Wilson Road county annex. “I have only one complaint. The underside of the roof for the drive-up windows was not finished. We spent $2.4 million on that building, but we couldn’t come up with $6,000 to $8,000 to finish the underside of that roof. The commissioners wanted to save some money.”

Birds will likely nest under the roof and soil taxpayers’ cars as they are being served at the drive-up windows, Yzagjuirre said.

“But it’s a nice building, people are gong to like it,” he said. “With two additional windows, they’re not going to have to wait in long lines.”

At the San Benito annex building, northern Cameron County residents can obtain copies of court documents, pay fines and court costs and can apply for passports, De la Garza said.

Staff members there have been trained to process passport applications and photos can be taken, saving county residents a trip to a post office.

On Tuesday, commissioners voted to provide office space to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at the San Benito annex building.