Commissioners expected to vote on whether to tear down Administrative Building No. 2

Published 6:00 pm Saturday, April 6, 2019

The members of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners are expected to vote on Monday on whether to tear down Administrative Building No. 2 on King Street.

“It’s on the agenda,” said board Chairman Lynn Laughter. The commissioners meet at 6 p.m. in Administrative Building No. 2.

Laughter said even if the commissioners approve the measure it would be a couple of months before the building is torn down. Commissioners said they have no current plans to build anything in its place.

“We are still trying to figure out what we will do with the accountability courts,” Laughter said. “That’s what we are still talking about. (County Administrator Mark Gibson) has been out looking for space. I’ve looked at some space. We are looking for a space to move those people to.”

Administrative Building No. 2 houses the commissioners’ meeting room as well as the offices of the accountability courts — Domestic Violence Court, Drug Court and Mental Health Court — and the RESOLV (Recognizing, Exposing, Stopping Our Learned Violence) Project anger management program, a nonprofit program that works with the accountability courts in Whitfield and Murray counties and with the Northwest Georgia Family Crisis Center.

The building was built in the late 1960s and has a number of structural issues. The Dalton Fire Department sent the county a three-page letter last year detailing the ways the building fails to meet the fire code, including insufficient emergency lighting, use of extension cords because of insufficient electrical wiring and no central fire alarm system.

In March, the Dalton Fire Department sent county officials a letter telling them the county would have to vacate the building by April 1. The two sides later reached an agreement that the county could continue to use the building while commissioners decide what to do with it as long as they have a certified firefighter in the building performing “fire watch” patrol whenever there are people in the building.

Commissioner Roger Crossen said Friday he favors tearing down the building.

“I think that would be the most fiscally responsible thing to do,” he said. “We just can’t keep putting money into it.”

Commissioner Greg Jones said Friday he doesn’t yet know how he will vote.

“I’ve got more research to do,” he said. But Jones said that commissioners “will have to do something in the next couple of months” about the building and not put off a decision.

Commissioner Harold Brooker said Friday he wants to have a plan for what to do with the accountability courts offices before voting on whether to tear down Administrative Building No. 2.

Commissioner Barry Robbins said Friday he wants to explore all options for the building.

“When I said ‘tear it down’ (at the commission work session in March), I meant that would be preferable to putting more money into it,” he said. “I don’t think we should put more money into it. But I also think we should discuss selling it and see if that is an option we could pursue.”

Commissioners had planned to use $18.2 million from the proposed Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) that was defeated in March to tear down Administrative Building No. 2 and build a new administrative building in its place. They also planned to renovate the Gillespie Drive gym to house the accountability court offices. The 1 percent, six-year, $100 million SPLOST would also have paid for repairs to the old section of the courthouse and to the jail, to build a new park on the south end of the county and to make improvements to the animal shelter, among other projects.

Asked if the county would still do any of those projects, there was a consensus among the commissioners that the leaking roof of the old section of the courthouse has to be repaired and the heating and air conditioning (HVAC) and plumbing work at the jail must be done.

Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Wesley Lynch said both the air-conditioning units at the jail and their control system are 16 years old.

“We don’t want (the control system) to suddenly fail on us,” he said. “We want Trane to be able to come in and put in a new system with a new (computer) operating system.”

He said they would also like to begin the process of replacing the air-conditioning units themselves.

Lynch said the jail had to replace one of its boilers about a year ago.

“The other is a backup to that one. It’s 16 years old, too, and has been working constantly, feeding water to our industrial kitchen and laundry section,” he said. “We don’t want to have a critical failure because for sanitation reasons we have to have hot water to clean food trays and make sure that we sanitize clothing and bedding.”

Laughter said each of those projects would cost about $1 million.

The county has a $20.3 million fund balance, and some commissioners said Friday they could dip into that fund balance to fund the work rather than raise taxes.

Laughter said funding the work through a bond would require placing the measure on the ballot, and she said in light of the defeat of the SPLOST she doesn’t believe voters would approve a bond.