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By Jim Buice
Enterprise Record

BERMUDA RUN – The town is taking an extra step to invest in public safety through a new agreement with the Davie County Sheriff’s Office.
Following a presentation from Jessie Folger, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Davie County, in this month’s town council meeting, Mayor Mike Brannon announced that he wanted to “call an audible” and have Sheriff JD Hartman come forward and share updates pertinent to the town.
“We have worked together on a project to enhance our ability to serve the town,” Hartman said. “So the town is going to help us with a little bit of additional funding for our contract, and that will buy some equipment that will allow us to investigate cases a little better.
“It is equipment that will help us move faster to respond to, for example, Kinderton had the car break-ins just recently. It would have enhanced our ability to respond to that. With those pieces of equipment, we have 10 of those around the county outside the city, but we’re going to have five inside the city of limits here in Bermuda Run.”
Brannon replied that the town looks forward to working with the sheriff’s office on this initiative with a timeline of it going into effect this month.
“Obviously for our friends in Kinderton, we would have probably liked to have had that 45 days ago,” he said, “but it’s a great partnership that we have with your office and with you. For those in audience tonight, in case you’re wondering if it seems like the language here is a little covert, that’s by design. The goal is not to give specificity other than what the sheriff has shared in terms of the equipment and what the goals are for that.”
Brannon later offered more clarity on the subject.
“Given this technology is deployed and managed by the sheriff’s office and not the town, I wanted to defer to the sheriff to decide how much he wanted to share about this new technology and the placement of this equipment,” he said. “After the meeting, Sheriff Hartman did agree that we could share that this equipment is a new camera network.”
Hartman gave some examples of the impact this has made in the county.
“Just in 2024, it’s assisted us to recover 14 stolen vehicles, 11 stolen license plants, located three missing persons and recover three stolen firearms in addition to locating multiple wanted people and solving several larceny cases,” Hartman said, “So that equipment will be instrumental in helping us.”
Brannon later said that the new equipment discussed “will be around $15,000 in increased annual cost” to the current community officer program with the sheriff’s office that has a price tag of approximately $98,000 per year. That program was started in 2017 and renewed in November 2022 for five years.
“We initiated discussions with Sheriff Hartman earlier this year on opportunities for improvements in technology,” Brannon said. “Given this is his area of expertise, we wanted to see what recommendations he had. After several discussions, we agreed to add this incremental investment in our 2024-25 budget.
“So I expect we will soon see an amendment to that contract to include this added technology. The county has 10 and the town is investing in five. I think that says a lot in terms of our desire to stay to our mission, which is to be a safe community.”
• In an action item, the council approved a staff recommendation to allow Town Manager Andrew Meadwell to negotiate and execute an agreement with Blakely Landscaping Service for the annual leaf removal contract.
Meadwell said that there were four bidders and that the prices “were all over the place, but it’s not always the lower bidder that receives the contract, but when you look at the state statute, it’s always the lowest responsive, responsible bidder. And in staff’s opinion and looking at the bids and our interviews and what was provided, we feel that Blakely Landscaping is the most responsible bidder.”
Meadwell said that if for some reason if this contract can’t be negotiated and executed, the town would go to the next bidder in line, which could include modifications to some of the requirements.
Meadwell added as he continues his “certification in “leafology” and looking at the weather and trying to predict, “we’re really thinking that our leaf pickup will begin on Friday, Nov. 1, or more likely probably on Monday, Nov. 4, to start that process of just really looking at how the leaves will start to be forecasted to changes colors.
“If you remember last year, I think we got our first load of leaves up probably in the middle of October and extended all the way to the middle of January. So we’re really anticipating a possibly shorter leaf season.”
In other highlight, the council:
• Appointed Christy Schafer as the council’s representative to the Bermuda Run Vision Committee, replacing Melinda Szeliga, who resigned her position on the council in the August meeting.
• Heard from Schafer regarding the celebration of the town’s 25th anniversary, which was postponed the weekend of Sept. 27-28 and now will be held Friday, Oct. 18, from 5-8 p.m. in the town square on Kinderton Boulevard off of US 158. There will be food trucks along with other treats and games for the kids and with live music provided by local band Pushin’ Georgia.
• Heard from Meadwell in his manager’s report, including that the flag poles for the The Flags at Blue Heron Trail project are up; Phase II of the Kinderton sidewalk is complete; and that with no business to discuss and early voting starting at Town Hall, both the planning board and council agenda meetings in October have been cancelled.
• Heard from Brannon in the mayor’s report regarding the recent passing of Jerry West, a former council member who served for eight years, and Kathryn Crosby, who was the driving force behind the Crosby Scholars program and Crosby National Celebrity Golf Tournament that was held for many years at the Bermuda Run Country Club.
He also mentioned that the final concert of the season will be Saturday, Oct. 26 at 6 p.m. featuring Envision in the town square.