DALTON, Ga. — The Partnership Health Center in Dalton’s Mack Gaston Community Center could close at the end of the month.

Steve Miracle, CEO of Georgia Mountains Health Services, the Morganton-based nonprofit agency that operates the clinic, said in a letter to City Administrator Jason Parker that the organization will leave three months before its lease ends on July 31 if the agreement isn’t renegotiated.

In the letter, Miracle says that during the five years the organization has operated the clinic it has had more than 19,000 patient visits and about half of them were by patients who have no health insurance.

The clinic is not a free clinic, and these patients pay $25 a visit, “which includes basic lab tests and the office visit itself,” Miracle writes.

While the letter does not state it outright, city officials say Miracle has told them that the clinic is losing money. Miracle did not immediately return a message left on his cellphone Thursday.

“We would like to continue providing care to the residents of Dalton and Whitfield County,” he wrote in the letter.

Miracle proposed three changes to the lease agreement:

• End the requirement that the clinic be open five days a week.

• Provide a financial subsidy to support the health care for the uninsured.

• Create a long-term contract.

Council members don’t seem amenable to providing funding for the clinic.

“For me personally, I don’t see that,” said Mayor Dennis Mock. “We already provide them the space.”

Georgia Mountains Health Services pays $1 a year for its space in the community center.

Instead, council members are looking to attract another health care provider to the site.

“We are going to contact Georgia Mountains Health Services representatives to see if we can work out a situation where they will reduce the number of days but remain in the community center for a period of time, so that we can issue a request for other providers who will come in and occupy that space,” said Parker.

Council members suggested the clinic be open three days during this period.

“That sounds like it would be reasonable,” said council member Denise Woods.

But Mock said the reduced number of days of service would only be a stopgap.

“We want someone in there five days a week,” he said.

Some community center users said Thursday they hope the clinic can be saved.

“There are a lot of people in this area who use it who don’t have transportation and can’t get to any other doctors,” said Maria Cervantes.

Tommy Pinson, director of the community center, agreed.

“If they can get someone else in here, I think it will be OK. But there are people who walk here from the neighborhoods around us because they don’t have a car or anyone to drive them,” he said.

Last year, Mock sent a letter to Georgia Mountains on May 9 cancelling the lease effective at midnight on July 31. While Mock’s letter did not specify why he terminated the lease, he said in an interview, “We’ve had some concerns about whether they have been open the hours they should be.”

On June 2, City Council members agreed city officials would try to renegotiate the lease. The sides reached an agreement in August

Miracle said at the time the clinic has one doctor who works three days a week, a nurse practitioner who works two days a week and another nurse practitioner who works one day a month. He said 51 percent of the clinic’s patients have no insurance; 40 percent have Medicaid, PeachCare (a joint federal-state program that provides health coverage for children in low-income families who don’t qualify for Medicaid) or Medicare; and the rest have private insurance.