The Peachtree City Council Thursday night will officially swear in the city’s first new police chief since 1989.

Halifax C. “Skip” Clark, fresh from his long tenure with the 15-member Juno Beach, Fla., police department, will take over from Acting Chief Mike Dupree, who has been in charge of the department since the sudden departure of longtime Chief James Murray late last year.

Until he finds a house and brings his family up from Florida, Clark said he’s living in an apartment and getting to know Peachtree City.

It’s a lot different than the east Florida beach town in which he rose from beat cop to chief since 1980. His old department has a fourth the staff and a third the budget of Peachtree City’s department.

His old beat had 3,644 year-round residents, while Peachtree City’s current population tops 37,000.

But Clark leaves behind a nationally accredited department and comes to another accredited unit.

He brings a new perspective on some old problems in Peachtree City. While former Chief Murray was markedly unenthusiastic about assigning regular patrols to the city’s 90 miles of cart paths, Clark arrives to find a full-time two-officer cart patrol already undertaken by Acting Chief Dupree.

That may be because in a March interview with The Citizen, Clark suggested deploying a “citizens’ patrol” on the paths and installing surveillance cameras on strategic portions of the cart path system.

Also unlike Murray, Clark seemed eager for the Peachtree City department to become a part of the countywide Drug Task Force run by the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department. Murray resisted participation in the DTF until the day he left.

Clark also faces a headquarters crisis. The department had to vacate its 6-year-old building on Ga. Highway 74 South last October to allow repairs on continuing moisture and other problems.

The building cost $1.75 million to construct and another $593,000 last year to repair. More construction problems have been uncovered and the council is now wrestling with whether to spend more money on repairs or find another headquarters location.

The council earlier this month delayed a decision on spending another $720,000 to bring the HQ up to standard.

Buying the department’s current temporary address would cost $5.4 million plus costs of evicting and relocating current commercial tenants.

Clark will have to drive past a dry cleaners and sandwich shop to find his department in rented space behind a strip shopping center at the corner of Aberdeen Parkway and Hwy. 74 North. It’s right behind a lighted “Buckle up” trailer sign that’s marked with a department logo beside Hwy. 74.