DALTON, Ga, — A number of Whitfield County offices will begin relocating in the next few weeks.

On Thursday in a called meeting, the Board of Commissioners voted 4-0 to approve a two-year lease for the top three floors of the Wells Fargo Bank building at 201 S. Hamilton St. The county will pay $10,160 a month for a little over 18,000 square feet.

The lease will kick off a series of moves of county offices.

The Public Defender’s Office will move to the third floor of the Wells Fargo building from a 7,300-square-foot building the county is currently renting on Waugh Street. The county is paying $3,500 a month for that building.

County administration, engineering, information technology, finance, human resources and public relations offices will move to the fourth and fifth floors of the Wells Fargo building from Administrative Building No. 1, at 301 W Crawford St. The building inspector and some other offices related to inspections will be moving to space on Gillespie Drive near a county gym.

Accountability courts offices — for Domestic Violence Court, Drug Court and Mental Health Court — will move from Administrative Building No. 2, at 214 W. King St., into Administrative Building No. 1.

“Admin 1 is pretty much move-in ready for them,” said Board Chairman Lynn Laughter. “It has a security system and everything. The judges have signed off on this.”

Commissioners said they plan to have all of the offices in their new buildings by July 1 if not earlier.

Administrative Building No. 2 also holds the commissioners’ meeting room. The commissioners say they have made no decision yet on where they will hold meetings.

Commissioners said the moves are necessary because of the need to move out of Administrative Building No. 2. The building, 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 decided 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 voted for the measure but said he wasn’t happy.

“We have no choice,” he said. “But this is (money) we don’t have in our budget.”

Commissioners agreed this is not a permanent solution to the issue of what to do with county offices.

“But it will give us time to put together a long-range plan that can be funded by a SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) that is smaller and more targeted,” said Commissioner Greg Jones.

Commissioners had planned to use $18.2 million from a proposed six-year, $100 million 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 courts offices.

A press release from the county said a new administrative building “remains under consideration.”