Senoia okays bid for trimming trees

By JOHN THOMPSON
jthompson@thecitizennews.com

In a city known for its trees, Senoia officials came to a difficult decision Monday night.

Three of the town’s older trees are now posing threats to property owners. The most dangerous situation is at the corner of Ga. Highway 16 and Bridge Street, where a giant oak has died and its limbs are perched precariously above a house.

The council approved an emergency expenditure of $4,350 for Town and Country Tree Service to get rid of the tree before it comes crashing down on the house.

The city also wants to take down two sycamore trees behind the Bank of Coweta, but Mayor Joan Trammell said that will have to wait until a new budget year.

The council got embroiled in a mini-debate, because this was the second set of bids they had taken on the project. The initial letting yielded only one bid, so the city solicited more bids.

Although the council decided to award the bid, Trammell voiced objections because the initial bid of White Meadows was published in local papers.

“I just don’t think we did the bid right,” she said.

In other news, Trammell announced a public hearing on a 100-acre annexation request on Rockaway Road for Tuesday night at 7 p.m.

She also dismissed suggestions that the annexations were her ideas.

“I am personally not going out and soliciting annexations. The developers are coming to us,” she said.

Eventually, she said, she would like to see the city form an annexation task force and have a checklist set up for requests, so city officials could quickly determine the impact of each annexation on the community.