Steve Cooper, 7, looks through a pile of limbs close to his home on Starlight Drive Monday.(Chad Applebaum The Vicksburg Post)

[6/3/03]After weeks of tree limbs and leaves piled up at a neighbor’s house, 7-year-old Steve Cooper Jr., decided to do something about it and earned a Boy Scout merit badge for doing a good deed in the process.

Steve, who will be a second-grader at Dana Road Elementary this fall, wrote a letter to Vicksburg Mayor Laurence Leyens, which he read aloud Monday at the city board meeting.

“If you send a big, white truck I’ll pick it up,” Steve told the mayor and aldermen.

Denise Cooper, 204 Starlight Drive, said her son wrote the letter after she had complained for nearly a month about a pile of limbs on the side of the street at a neighbor’s home. She said Steve told her they should write a letter to the mayor after several phone calls to City Hall yielded no results.

“I just said to him jokingly, If you write the mayor we’ll find him,'” Cooper said.

She said they went to Monday’s meeting looking to hand the letter to Leyens and leave, but were asked to stay by North Ward Alderman Gertrude Young. Leyens then called on Steve during the meeting to read his letter before the board, the audience and people watching on the city’s cable channel.

“It was cool,” Steve said later.

In his letter, Steve asked Leyens, who had visited his Boy Scout troop before, to send a truck to Starlight Drive and offered to pick up the limbs and put them in the truck. Leyens said he called on Steve to read his letter before the board because he was impressed by Steve’s willingness to help do something.

“To me, this was a wonderful moment in my administration,” Leyens said. “It shows that even a 7-year-old can make a difference.”

After the meeting, Leyens sent the city’s community improvement coordinator, Robert Hubbard, to meet with the Coopers and find out why the pile had been left by the street for three weeks. Hubbard said crews would be there this morning to clean up the debris.

“You see this all over the city and it’s becoming a real problem,” said Hubbard, who heads the city’s community service department.

Under city ordinance, yard waste and tree limbs will be picked up along with household trash on the second day of collection if the branches are cut into 4-foot sections and bundled. City crews before November would pick up large piles despite the law, and some residents are still reluctant to follow the rules now being enforced.

Cooper said she called the city’s action line to complain, and that a code enforcement officer had visited the neighborhood, but told her that the city could not do anything until the property owner who had put out the debris was taken to court. That court date had been set for today, she was told.

Steve said that the limbs were keeping him from mowing the grass where they were piled up and was making a mess as dried, dead leaves were blown across the street.

“My son is awesome,” Cooper said. “I’m just pleased that the mayor took the time to let my son say what he had to say and to let him read his letter.”

In other matters the city board:

Recognized the Porters Chapel Academy Baseball team for winning the Class A State Championship.

Adopted an order to make Walnut Towers, 1500 Walnut St., available for public parking.

Accepted a letter from the Lamar Company withdrawing its appeal from the Zoning Board regarding a billboard at 2639 Washington St. that the board had ordered down.

Swore in two police officers.

Authorized the submittal of an application to the U.S. Department of Justice for funding of police overtime under the Homeland Security Program.

Accepted and granted conditional approval for tax abatement to Mary Barnes for property at 1805 Washington St.

Approved purchase orders in the amount of $51,000 for emergency repairs from flooding in April.

Approved the purchase of radio equipment for two new ambulances at a cost of $19,000.

The city board will meet again at 10 a.m. June 10 at City Hall Annex.