Avondale Estates, GA  — The city of Avondale Estates is seeking applicants for the Tree Board. The deadline to apply is Aug. 31 at 5 p.m.

The Tree Board is made up of seven members who are appointed by the mayor and serve two-year terms. The city tree officer is one of the members of the board.

The Tree Board studies, investigates, counsels and advises the city manager, who will administer a written plan for the care of trees and shrubs in parks, along streets and in other public areas, according to the city’s website. The plan includes planting, preservation, pruning, removal or disposition and replanting.

The Tree Board currently has one member, along with the city tree officer, and has several vacancies to be filled after board members resigned.

At the July 28 Avondale Estates City Commission meeting, the commissioners were supportive of reinvigorating the board and filling the vacancies. They agreed that the board needs clearer direction from the city and some suggestions were made to do that through the tree ordinance.

“The ordinance as written is already clear,” City Manager Patrick Bryant. “It was just that this previous iteration of the Tree Board was not following the ordinance and so when city staff asked them to, they didn’t want to. They wanted to kind of do their own thing so a lot of them resigned because they didn’t want to follow the ordinance governing what the Tree Board is supposed to do.”

The Tree Board hasn’t met since 2017, and while there were individual members of the board who carried out the board duties, the board as a whole decline to perform the functions that are already laid out in the ordinance, Bryant said.