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Orange County will name its future crisis diversion center for a commissioner who championed service to others until her unexpected death in June.
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The county’s Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday night to name the $24.9 million facility in honor of Jamezetta Bedford, who was first elected to the board in 2018. Bedford died on July 21, just a few days after the commissioners voted to fund construction.
Her “legacy of public service” will be memorialized in the Jamezetta Bedford Crisis Care Center.
“Jamezetta believed deeply in the power of public service to change lives, and she never lost sight of the people behind the policies and decisions we made,” Commissioners Chair Jean Hamilton said.
“She was a champion for people who too often face barriers to care and opportunity, and she understood that our community needed a better response to behavioral health crises. Naming this facility in her honor is especially meaningful because she helped make this project possible,” Hamilton said.
While Bedford was not present for the June 16 vote, she was a member of the Crisis Diversion Facility Subcommittee and “was one of the project’s primary driving forces,” county officials said in a news release.
Her service focused on advocating for children, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, behavioral health resources and other vulnerable residents through multiple boards and commissions, including the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, Triangle West Transportation Planning Organization, Board of Social Services, Board of Health, Justice Advisory Council and the Behavioral Health Task Force.
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Before joining the commissioners, she volunteered with the Ephesus Elementary School PTA and served on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education from 2003 to 2015.
She also was a past president of the Chapel Hill Area Unit of the Autism Society of North Carolina.
The crisis care center is under construction and projected to open in the spring of 2028.
County staff estimated it could cost about $2.7 million a year to operate, in addition to patient care costs, some of which could be reimbursed by Medicaid and insurance, County Manager Travis Myren has said.
A third-party agency will provide clinical and medical services, working to stabilize patients and connect them with local programs and additional resources.
The facility will be a community-based resource for adults and children experiencing behavioral health crises, reducing “pressure on hospitals, the detention center, first responders, and other community response systems,” the release said.
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