In a special called meeting Monday, Beaufort County commissioners voted to hold off on the dissolution of the local hospital board.

Commissioners voted 5-0 in favor of a temporary stay. Commissioners Frankie Waters and Ron Buzzeo were absent.

According to Beaufort County Manager Brian Alligood, a meeting last week between Vidant, county and Nexsen Pruett attorney Joe Kahn, who specializes in health care law, determined that keeping the board intact until two outstanding liabilities were dealt with would save the county money in the long run.

The two outstanding cases are retirement obligations to employees — one of which has to be processed by the IRS, which could take six to nine months, Alligood said.

“The attorneys advised to not dissolve the board until IRS takes care of it,” Alligood said. “We certainly don’t want to cause a hiccup in anything they’re doing.”

If the board was dissolved, the matter would be turned over to attorneys to handle, at a high cost to the county.

Commissioners voted in July to dissolve the Beaufort County Regional Medical Authority, which oversaw a trust fund for any outstanding liabilities the county hospital may have accrued before Vidant Health took over the lease of the hospital in 2011. One of the stated reasons for the decision was that the trust’s $6.4 million of money given to the county by Vidant would revert to the hospital authority board on Sept. 1, 2016, and could be used at the board’s discretion.

Commissioners have said the money would remain in a trust but would be used at the commissioners’ discretion, solely for the purpose of improving health care and its services in Beaufort County.

Commissioner Hood Richardson, who has long-served as the hospital board’s chairman, has object to the hospital board’s dissolution and made a point of clarifying in Monday’s meeting whether the board would continue to function as it has in the past. Richardson has made the argument that there are still outstanding liabilities that are unknown and the hospital board was put in place to protect the county from these unknown liabilities.