DALTON, Ga. — Whitfield County Administrative Building No. 2 won’t be coming down just yet.

The Board of Commissioners voted Monday night 4-0 to take up to 90 days to study other options besides tearing the building down. Officials said they have that amount of time under a proposal submitted by the contractor that would do the demolition. Board Chairman Lynn Laughter typically votes only in the event of a tie.

County Administrator Mark Gibson could not immediately provide the name of the contractor that would do the work.

“We want to be able to look at all our options and make sure that we know what we are going to do with the people (in Administrative Building No. 2),” said Commissioner Greg Jones.

Administrative Building No. 2, at 214 W. King St., houses 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.

“I am thankful to the commissioners for making this decision,” said Jevin Jensen, the treasurer for RESOLV and a board member of the Northwest Georgia Family Crisis Center, which operates the program.

“I really appreciate them giving us some time to figure what to do with the instructors and clients, to find a good place for them and to notify everyone of the change,” Jensen said.

The building, located at the corner of King Street and Selvidge Street, opened in 1967 as a church 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 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.

Gibson has already been looking at options for relocating the accountability court offices.

Commissioners also voted 4-0 to proceed with more than $1 million in repairs to the Whitfield County jail, including a new control system for the heating and air conditioning system (HVAC), which is 16 years old, and a new boiler.

“We have been looking at this for over a year now,” said sheriff’s office Capt. Wesley Lynch. “What we will do now is break each issue down and put out RFPs (requests for proposals). We want to get the solutions that fix these problems long term and at the best cost.”

Commissioners also voted 4-0 to place a moratorium on installing pipes along county roads except for those installed by contractors working on commercial developments or where it is deemed necessary by the public works department. The moratorium does not affect the culverts placed underneath driveways.

Under a decades-old policy, if homeowners outside the city of Dalton wanted tile pipes underneath the road right of way in front of their homes, the county public works department installed it, charging the homeowner $10 a foot.

Public Works Director DeWayne Hunt said at the board’s work session in March the pipe costs the county $12.86 a foot now, and that’s not even counting the costs of the manpower and machinery to install it. And the county is also responsible for keeping those pipes unclogged and for replacing damaged pipes.

Board members also voted 4-0 to name James Garvin as the new finance director.

Garvin, 51, graduated from North Georgia College (now the University of North Georgia) with a bachelor of business administration degree, majoring in accounting, and is a certified public accountant (CPA).

Garvin has been assistant controller for Tip Top Poultry Inc. in Marietta since 2017. He served as auditor and tax and financial accountant for Williamson & Co. CPAs in Cartersville from 2001 to 2007 and 2009 to 2017. He was a tax and financial accountant for McKee Foods (the maker of Little Debbie snacks) in Collegedale, Tennessee, from 2007-09.

Garvin will be paid $102,000 annually. Alicia Vaughn, the previous finance director who left in September of last year to become county manager in Catoosa County, was being paid $108,149 annually. She had been with the county since 2012.