DALTON, Ga. — The Partnership Health Center, which provides low-cost health care to those with low incomes, might get another lease at Dalton’s Mack Gaston Community Center.

Members of the City Council wouldn’t say much after emerging from a 45-minute executive session closed to the public and the media at City Hall Friday afternoon, but they did say they would like to renegotiate the lease that Georgia Mountains Health Services, the Morganton-based nonprofit agency that operates the Partnership Health Center, holds on space at the community center.

On May 9, Mayor Dennis Mock sent a letter to Georgia Mountains cancelling that lease effective at midnight on July 31. Georgia Mountains has operated the clinic for five years.

While Mock’s letter did not specify why he terminated the lease, he said in an interview last week, “We’ve had some concerns about whether they have been open the hours they should be. We’ve sent some city employees over there for drug testing and they weren’t open, so we’d have to send them back and lose more time.”

Going into Friday’s meeting, some council members said they had questions about how the termination was handled and said the council members had not discussed the matter.

But after the meeting, council members were mum on whether those questions had been answered.

“That will surface as we move forward with the option of renewing the lease,” said council member Gary Crews, when asked if he thought the termination had been properly handled.

Asked if he was comfortable that the termination had been properly handled and the mayor had the authority to do so, council member Tyree Goodlett said simply, “Yes.”

Council member Tate O’Gwin said there was a reason council members were so guarded in their comments.

“We are looking forward to negotiating a new lease and we feel that any comments right now might undermine that negotiation process. I would say that we are interested in approaching Georgia Mountains Health Services for the purposes of negotiating a new lease,” O’Gwin said.

Asked if she thought the lease termination process was properly handled, council member Denise Wood said, “All decisions that impact the citizens of Dalton need to be discussed with all five elected officials.”

Wood said council members had discussed “some aspects” of the lease before it was terminated but not all. She declined to specify what was discussed.

Phone messages left for Mayor Dennis Mock after the meeting were not immediately returned.

Reached after the meeting, Georgia Mountains Health Services CEO Steve Miracle said he is eager to begin discussions with city officials.

“I’m really excited that we will have the opportunity to continue providing care there,” he said.

Virgelia Meek and Mary Thelma Norris of the League of Women Voters of the Dalton Area attended the meeting and after the council members emerged from the executive session, Meek read a statement from the League expressing concern about the fact the decision to terminate the lease was not made or discussed in public.

“This is a small community. There’s no reason why we can’t have communication,” said Norris.

And while the League’s statement only expressed concern about the process used to terminate the lease, both women said they are happy the council members will look for a way to keep the clinic in the community center.

“I make a tremendous number of referrals to (the clinic),” said Norris, who is director of the Friendship House, a nonprofit day care. “They can do drop-ins. They can be a primary caregiver, and they are so convenient.”

Miracle says 45 percent of the clinic’s patients have no health insurance and another 20 percent are covered by Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides health care for low-income individuals.