DALTON, Ga. — Dalton City Council member Tyree Goodlett says he did not know the city was terminating the lease for the Partnership Health Center in the Mack Gaston Community Center until the mayor sent a letter to the agency that operates the clinic. Now, Goodlett said he is worried about what will happen to residents of the east side of Dalton who depend on the clinic.

“I am concerned that we don’t have someone lined up. I also want to find out more about how we got to this point and how the decision was made,” he said. “This wasn’t something that came to the council for a vote.”

For the past five years, the Partnership Health Center has provided low-cost health care to low-income patients in offices inside the Gaston center.

But its lease expires at midnight on July 31. And on May 9 Dalton Mayor Dennis Mock sent a letter to Georgia Mountain Health Services, the Morganton-based nonprofit agency that operates the center, saying the city was terminating the agency’s lease. Georgia Mountain Health Services, which paid $1 a year for its offices in the community center, also operates low-cost clinics in Chatsworth, Blue Ridge, Dahlonega and Ellijay.

The lease would have renewed for another five years if Georgia Mountain Health Services had sent notice not less than 90 days before the end of the lease.

Georgia Mountain Health Services CEO Steve Miracle acknowledges he did not do that.

“That was our oversight,” he said. “But given the work that we are doing, and nobody has said anything bad about the care that we provide to the people of that community, even if we did not take the steps to renew the agreement, which we did not, I can’t believe that somebody didn’t come to us and say, ‘Do you intend to continue there?’”

Goodlett said he has not heard any complaints from the public about the clinic and did not recall the council members discussing any problems there.

City Council member Tate O’Gwin said the council had discussed the clinic but he could not recall the specifics of those conversations, such as when they talked about the clinic or what was said.

When asked if he’d received any complaints from city residents about the clinic he declined to comment and said he needed to speak to the city attorney.

Miracle says 45 percent of the patients seen by the center have no health insurance and another 20 percent are served by Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides health insurance for low-income people.

Mock’s letter does not specify why the lease was terminated.

“We’ve had some concerns about whether they have been open the hours they should be,” Mock said in an interview. “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.”

Miracle said that is what Mock told him when they met after he received the letter terminating the lease. He says he was surprised to hear that. He said that when the clinic first opened there were some issues because it was not open on Fridays. But he says it has been open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for three or four years.

An open records request to the city found a series of emails in April and early May between city officials and Georgia Mountain Health Services officials about a data breach of city employees’ records.

Miracle says a list of names of city employees who had been sent to the center for drug testing had been found in the county landfill. He said the list was from 2013 and he doesn’t now how it got there. He says city officials did not indicate that played any role in the decision to end the lease.

Miracle says he is looking at finding another location in Dalton, but he says he’s unlikely to find another site that charges only $1 a year rent. He says if he cannot find a site the center will refer patients to Georgia Mountain Health Services’ office in Chatsworth. But he says many lack transportation to get there.

Mock says city officials are already working to bring in another free or low-cost clinic into the Gaston center.

Council members Gary Crews and Denise Wood did not immediately return messages left on their cellphones Friday.