🗞️ 103 new hospital beds are on the table, and the hearing was here

🗞️ The pond that made a hard water week harder

🗞️ Kernersville Little Theatre is bringing books to life

🗞️ Who to call when something in town needs fixing

☀️ Sunny | High: 85°F | Low: 61°F

Saturday night's showers clear out before dawn and Sunday turns up spotless. Look for full sun, a high near 85 and a northwest wind of 5 to 8 mph, with rain nowhere on the board. Sunday night settles to around 61 and stays mostly clear, which is the coolest night we have had in a good while and worth opening a window for. The rest of the stretch holds: Monday is sunny and 86, and Tuesday is sunny and 86 again. Three clear days in a row is not something we get often in August, so use them.

Three health systems came to Kernersville on Thursday to make their case.

The North Carolina Division of Health Service Regulation held a public hearing Thursday morning at the Piedmont Triad Regional Council, 1398 Carrolton Crossing Drive, on four competing Certificate of Need applications. At stake are 103 new acute care hospital beds that the state's 2026 Medical Facilities Plan allocated to the Forsyth and Yadkin service area, which currently has 1,573 licensed acute care beds.

Three health systems filed those four applications, and together they asked for 262 beds — more than two and a half times what is available. Novant Health Kernersville Medical Center applied for up to 40 additional beds at a proposed cost of about $35.5 million, which would bring the hospital to no more than 103. Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center applied for up to 63. North Carolina Baptist Hospital, the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist main campus, applied for up to 103 at a proposed cost of about $101.1 million. Cone Health applied for 56 beds for a proposed new hospital in southeast Forsyth County, at a proposed cost of about $319.1 million.

Speakers included Nicole Brenner, president of Novant Health Kernersville Medical Center; Alisha Hutchens, Novant's senior vice president and Triad region president; Shannon Scaturro, chief operating officer at Cone Health; and Matt Edwards, chair of vascular surgery at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. Two days earlier, the state held a second hearing in the Municipal Courtroom at Kernersville Town Hall on a separate Novant proposal for a freestanding emergency department on Robinhood Road.

The state has 90 to 150 days from the July 1 start of the review to decide, and it cannot approve more beds than the plan calls for. That is a long wait for a decision that matters here: the last time the state recommended adding beds in this service area was 2007, and the last new hospital to open in Forsyth County was Clemmons Medical Center in 2013.

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The city has now answered the question a lot of us were asking in July.

When a 24-inch water main broke in the early morning hours of July 29 and knocked out service for an estimated 200,000 people across Winston-Salem, Kernersville and Walkertown, one detail kept coming up: crews were working around a pond. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Utilities has now explained where that pond came from, in an FAQ it has kept updated through Aug. 21.

The break did not happen underneath the pond, the city says, but next to it. "The pond was created over time as a result of grading activities on the property that caused stormwater runoff to collect in a low-lying area," the FAQ reads. "To safely access and repair the damaged pipe, crews partially drained the pond." Staff are still researching the history of the grading to understand how the pond formed, and the city has not said who owns the property.

A few numbers make the job clearer. The main sat roughly 30 to 40 feet below ground. The pipe is estimated to be about 50 years old, though the construction drawings carry no installation date, and the damaged section has been removed and handed to engineers. The city says the exact cause may never be definitively determined. This was also the second break in this area, after one in December 2023.

One thing worth knowing: that stretch was already slated for replacement. Hydraulic modeling had determined a 30-inch main is needed there, and the city says that project is underway and expected to be finished within a year. An after-action review is also under way, and the utility says it is launching a text and email notification portal for customers. Kernersville and Walkertown were the last two areas to come off the boil water advisory, which lifted July 31.

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A check for $5,000 came with a specific job attached to it.

The Kernersville Foundation presented Kernersville Little Theatre with $5,000 earmarked for Bring a Book to Life, the program KLT stages each year for students at Kernersville Elementary School. It is a small grant with an unusually clear purpose, which is what makes it worth a minute of your morning.

Here is how the program works. KLT picks a book, puts it on stage as a play, and brings the school's students in to watch it. Every student also goes home with their own age-appropriate copy of the book. The theatre's goal is to fund books for all of the roughly 850 children at the school, and it fundraises year round to get there.

The theatre is plain about why it does this. "For many of these children, this is the only live stage play they ever see," KLT says on its site. Its stated case is that a play can lengthen a child's attention span and connect them to the importance of reading, and that seeing a story acted out can reach a reluctant reader in a way a page sometimes does not.

If you want a sense of the scale, KLT publishes what its donations buy: $75 covers ten books, $80 covers ten student admissions, $150 sends eight students to the show with a book each, and $400 covers all the books for one classroom. A $5,000 gift moves a real portion of an 850-book goal.

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There is no single number, and that is the whole problem.

Kernersville has a Report a Problem page, which sounds like a front door for everything. It is not. It covers streets and street signs. Nearly everything else routes to an office the town does not answer, which is why a lot of calls land in the wrong place and lose a day. Here is the short version, worth keeping somewhere you can find it.

Start with the one people get wrong most: the town does not run your water. Kernersville households are customers of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Utilities, so a main break, a leak, no water, low pressure or a sewer backup all go to CityLink at 336-727-8000, or 311. The utility is emphatic that you must call for a water emergency and should not use the online form for one.

Potholes, damaged streets and missing or damaged street signs go to Public Services at 336-996-6916. If the road turns out to be state-maintained, it belongs to NCDOT at 1-877-368-4968. The town points residents to a map showing which streets are which, and that map link is currently dead, so call Public Services first and let them route it rather than trying to sort it out yourself.

The rest, briefly. Trash, recycling, yard waste and brush: Public Services, 336-996-6916. Streetlights belong to Duke Energy, not the town, and get reported through Duke's street light repair map. Stray, injured or nuisance animals: Forsyth County Animal Services, 336-727-2112, answered around the clock. Overgrown lots, junk cars, unpermitted work and other code concerns: Community Development, 336-992-0605, or [email protected]. Zoning questions go to that same number; permits and inspections go to 336-996-7166. Parks and greenways: 336-996-3062. Police, non-emergency: 336-996-3177. Town Hall's main line is 336-996-3121.

And one the town prints in all capital letters on its own Public Services page, so we will pass it along the same way: if a tree is blocking the road or comes down on a power line, call 911. That one is not a public works call.

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