Members of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners are considering buying this building and an acre of land on which it sits near the Carbondale Business Park for $100,000.

DALTON, Ga. — Members of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners weren’t ready to vote Monday night on possibly paying $100,000 for approximately one acre of land.

The item was removed from the agenda of a special called meeting by Chairman Lynn Laughter.

“I thought we needed more discussion,” Laughter said,

The property sits behind a closed gas station near the I-75 interchange on Carbondale Road and near a planned entrance to the Carbondale Business Park. An apparently unused metal building currently stands on the property. A large door of the building appears to have been knocked in. Though the building is barely visible from Carbondale Road, where it is hidden by the gas station, or from I-75, where trees and brush block the view, it would be visible from the entrance to the park.

“It really looks bad, and it’s really going to make it hard for us to bring any businesses in there,” Laughter said.

Georgia law bars local governments from condemning property for economic development. Laughter says that means that if the county wishes to buy the property it will have to pay what the owner, Ray Duncan, asks.

Commissioner Greg Jones said he is happy the item was removed from the agenda.

“It definitely needs more discussions,” he said.

Jones said he was surprised at how much the property would cost.

Commissioner Barry Robbins said he was surprised the measure was removed from the agenda.

“I was prepared to talk about it tonight,” he said.

Laughter said commissioners will likely discuss the matter and schedule a vote on the issue at their April 10 meeting.

In a work session after the meeting, commissioners heard from Public Defender Natalie Glaser about Administrative Building 2. That building hosts the public defender’s office and Drug Court as well as the commissioners’ meeting chambers.

Glaser, who has been public defender since January, said she was passing on concerns expressed by her staff. She noted that the building is not Americans with Disabilities Act compliant, which means that when attorneys or investigators meet with someone who is handicapped, they have to come down from their offices to a meeting room on the first floor.

She said the bathrooms are often clogged and staff have to cross the street to the courthouse. She noted that the building doesn’t have sprinklers and also does not have the sort of security features the courthouse has.

Buildings and Grounds Director Gary Brown said the building, which was built as a church in the 1940s, was purchased by the county more than a decade ago to temporarily house courtrooms and offices during the expansion of the courthouse. He said his staff is aware of the issues but the county currently doesn’t have space in the courthouse or any other building to move the public defender’s office to.

In January, commissioners agreed they need to start making long-range plans to replace the building. They said Monday they would start looking for short-term solutions to the issues raised by Glaser.