More than 2,500 people gathered Saturday in downtown Bulverde for the annual Bulverde Jubilee.

The festivities included face painting, a bean-bag toss, castle bounce a bicycle rodeo and washer pitching to name a few.

The parade kicked off at 11 a.m. with the Smithson Valley Marching Band which was followed by Grand Marshall Angie Meyer, Honorary Grand Marshall Earl Jahnsen, Miss San Antonio Alanna Sarabia, Bulverde Mayor Ray Jeffrey, Bulverde Police Chief Joe Hamilton and Comal County Sheriff Bob Holder.

The Bulverde Garden Club, Bulverde Senior Center and the U.S. Postal Service also provided floats for the parade.

H-E-B employees participated in the parade and pushed grocery carts along the parade route.

Riders on lawnmowers, Boy Scout troops, antique cars, hay wagons and political candidates entertained the crowd as they moved along the parade route.

Vendors offered a variety of food and drink as well as jewelry, pottery, toys and T-shirts.

The McKay Brothers, Roland and Rick Ramirez, and Charlie Wood provided live music.

Joni’s Dance Team, The Bluebonnet Scottish Dancers, Hermann and Sons Dancers and St. Paul’s Church Choir performed at various times during the day.

Event Chairwoman Cindy Cross said the Jubilee was absolutely fantastic.

“We have gotten numerous comments saying this year was the best yet,” she said.

Proceeds from the jubilee will benefit the Bulverde Food Pantry.

Cross said the event generated around $2,500 for the Food Pantry last year.

Home rule is the key to Bulverde’s successful future. When the city of Bulverde was incorporated less than 10 years ago, our founders were limited by state law to an area of only two square miles. They also had to link together in an unbroken line from such far flung population centers as Oak Village North and Shepherds Ranch. An unbroken boundary line was needed to keep us from being annexed by San Antonio.  The hard work of these local leaders was successful, but it necessarily resulted in twisting, fragmented city boundaries.

Due to the small size of our population, state law would only allow Bulverde to incorporate as a general-law city rather than as a home-rule city. Our population is now large enough to qualify us for home-rule status. A general-law city is limited in many respects, but most importantly its ability to grow is restricted.  Without passage of our home-rule charter, Bulverde will be forever confined to its current impractical boundaries.

Today, a great many people who say they live in Bulverde do not actually live in Bulver-de. In some places, the houses on one side of the road are in the city, and the houses on the other side are in the county. City residents as well as their neighbors outside the city are asking themselves what the benefit is to them for the city to be able to grow into adjacent territory. This is the crucial question of home rule.

In a stagnant rural area with little or no development, the issue of annexation is relatively unimportant. That is not the case in Comal County. Like it or not, Comal County is facing crushing development as the sixth fastest-growing county in Texas and the 58th fastest in the United States. 

By law, counties are limited in their ability to manage growth. Counties have no zoning authority. Zoning allows cities, but not counties, to plan growth to avoid having inconsistent land uses next to each other. 

Counties also have no authority to control lot size or density in subdivisions. Such subdivision rules allow cities, but not counties, to limit high density subdivisions to avoid straining natural resources and infrastructure.

Take a moment and identify the nearest undeveloped property to your homestead.  It may be a vacant lot or a large ranch. If it is outside the city, imagine the impact on you if that nearby property is developed as a concrete batch plant, a hog farm, or a car dealership. All of these uses are fine in the right place, and potentially disastrous near your homestead. Don’t fool yourself, development is coming.

On the other hand, if someone owns undeveloped property outside the city and wants to sell it for uses incompatible with neighboring property owners, he wants the city to stay away. This is where the vigorous opposition to home rule comes from – developers who will use almost any tactic to keep from having even common sense restrictions placed on the development of their land. I am for good development, but I am against giving developers free rein to develop without regard to their neighbors.

Over the last 10 years, many of the most urgent issues brought to our city government have concerned development in the county, which affected folks both inside and outside our city limits. 

When residents ask for help and we have to tell them there is nothing we can do because the property across the street or across the back fence is outside of the city, the harm from our impractical boundaries bec-omes all too real.

Why exactly should Bulver-de residents vote against home rule on Nov. 4? I was a member of the Bulverde Home Rule Charter Commission the last time home rule was proposed; however, I was against the final product because of changes made regarding annexation and now I am totally against home rule.

The rapid annexation policies of home-rule cities are one of the several key reasons we’ve lost many of our beautiful, small towns and rural landscapes across America, as well as countless small businesses.

Years ago, I was shocked to learn that small businesses add more federal taxes to our American government than do large businesses by a large percentage. Is it still so now? Small businesses and a healthy middle class go hand in hand.

Home-rule cities have a pattern of adding more taxes and regulations to mall businesses that are annexed into a city’s jurisdiction. Businesses that cannot keep up must close their doors.

Larger businesses that we see on every street in small and larger cities can keep up because they get many special benefits as well as being able to move their work force to a foreign country.

Businesses outside of Bulverde provide jobs for local residents. Aside from all of this is the loss of the beauty of the rural farms and ranches and estates owned by wealthy landowners.

Great pastures of rolling green, tree-covered acres with deer or cows grazing will all disappear with annexation. Owners of smaller acreages often cannot keep up with the increased taxes and must sell out. But the idea that residents won’t be taxed more flies in the face of reality. It seems that everyone knows that the larger the city is, the higher the taxes will be.

Bulverde is beautiful and nice, not just because the architects and planners have designed nice shopping centers and homes for people to live in. Bulverde is beautiful and attractive because it still feels like a small town, with beautiful pristine hills around it and small, friendly businesses and reasonable taxes.

We can save our area by saying no to home rule on Nov. 4.

Roseann Maurer
Spring Branch

In House District 73, which includes Comal County, we are very fortunate this year to have a choice of candidates from which to choose as our representative in the Texas State Legislature.

The candidates, Democrat Daniel Boone and Republican Doug Miller, need to present their positions openly to the voters of Comal County.

We have so many crucial issues facing us that we must choose wisely. How can we do this without hearing the candidates address the issues?

I, for one, am very interested in hearing the positions these men hold regarding our own Hill Country issues before we go to the polls. I understand that many other Comal County voters are also interested in knowing how these two men would represent our concerns in Austin.

Let’s have a debate between the candidates here in Comal County. The issues coming up in the legislature during the next session are too important to leave to chance.

Danny Root
Bulverde