Frank Bedell owns a Savannah business but chose to make his home in Bulloch County to escape Chatham County’s rising taxes, congestion and traffic. After property taxes increased rapidly here, he is campaigning for a Bulloch County Board of Commissioners seat, proposing to bring business-like solutions to repair “a broken system.”

So now he is in a three-candidate race with fellow challenger Ted Redman and incumbent Commissioner Toby Conner for Seat 2-B, appearing on the District 2 Republican primary ballot. The race will be decided in the May 19 vote count or a June 16 runoff between the top two vote-getters.

Asked why he’s now seeking elected office, Bedell said it seems to be “just what I’m supposed to be doing at this time in my life” at age 65, and having consulted family members.

“I keep up with politics but I never had any kind of inclinations to get in them, but when my taxes doubled last year on my little place – and like I said, I had left Savannah because they went up so high … so what I did was … as a businessman, I started looking into why the taxes are going up every year.”

Having grown up in Savannah, Bedell moved to a house on Talahi Island, also in Chatham County, around 1994, before moving to Bulloch County in 2019. He has operated a small business, B&B Trailers, in the Savannah area since 1995.

He and his life partner Susan now reside in a manufactured home on a tract of land he owns with a Bennett Grove Road, Brooklet address. They have two adult children, who live in Effingham and Chatham counties. While still maintaining his Savannah business, Bedell tends about 30 acres of hay fields on his and a neighbor’s Bulloch County tracts and sells the hay to horse owners.

‘A broken system’

He said he has done his research and that the current commissioners and county staff “have a broken system that they work in. They’re pushed to spend everything they have before the end of the year, a spend it or lose it mentality.”

“Well, that’s not good for taxpayers; that creates wastefulness,” Bedell said. “So why don’t we go in and run it like a business, don’t spend it, save it. Quit asking for money from the taxpayers.”

He added that nobody at this point should make “I’m going to lower your taxes” a talking point because it would just mean moving money from one place to another, unless the system is fixed first.

But when asked if there is any situation in which he would foresee voting for a tax increase, he said, “No sir, we have enough taxes; we just need to fix the spending.”

Streamlining incentive

The first step, he said, would be to “go in and talk to the departments,” county employees, “not just the department heads at some budget meeting.”

“Go talk to the people, let them tell you how to streamline, and just like I did with my business … offer the people working in each department an incentive, a little small bonus or whatever it needs to be to streamline their department, get it more efficient,” Bedell said.

Talking to people this way, “in an open-trust system” has worked for his small business, and the candidate believes that “transparency with the county employees and the taxpayers,” would be the most important thing the elected officials could have, he said.

“That’s how my guys, my company, went from building a trailer in three days to building it in eight hours,” Bedell said.

Controlling growth

“From everything that I’ve looked at and from all the talking and asking I’ve done, Bulloch County has enough housing for the next five years,” Bedell said.

If someone wants to create five-acre house lots, as allowed in the county’s AG-5 agricultural zones, or wants “20 or 100 acres and they want to make this their forever home, I’m all for it,” he said.

But he is opposed to someone rezoning that same land for higher density neighborhoods, at least for now. These developers tend to create the roads, “build to minimum specs” and then deed the infrastructure to the county, “which puts the burden on taxpayers,” Bedell asserted.

“If we have enough housing, let individuals move here, let them build their houses, that’s all fine and dandy, but for right now we just have to say ‘no’ to rezoning for high-density neighborhoods,” he said. “That’s where I stand.”

Infrastructure thoughts

On infrastructure development, Bedell said the county needs to get back to maintaining what it has, such as dirt roads.

“Where has that money gone? …. If that money is not getting spent on grading roads every four to six weeks like they used to be, and you’re seeing four to six months now, in some places, where is that money?” he asked.

While public safety services are vital, Bedell agrees, he also suggests the county needs to be more careful about how it spends money on things such as building fire and EMS stations.

“Do we need EMS? Yes, we do. Do we need fire? Yes, we do,” he said. “But also – and this came from a constituent here in this county, ‘The government’s not my mama and daddy.’ When I moved here, I understood and knew that I was moving into a rural area that was going to have longer fire and EMS response times. That was a choice I made.”

He said he is respectfully asking voters for their votes, “and just for them to know that I am a guy that’s saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ and I mean it, and I’m going to vote ‘no,’ especially on data centers.”