VIDALIA — The City of Vidalia could consider revising its littering ordinance to disallow the delivery of free, unsubscribed newspapers to residences in the city limits.

The city’s street director, Lee Staggs, raised the issue Tuesday, saying residents are not collecting the newspapers that are thrown in their driveways.

“They throw them in their driveways, (the residents) don’t subscribe to them, they don’t pick them up and they leave it in the driveway and it ends up in our drains,” he said. “As far as I am concerned, if (the newspaper) is non-subscribed, it is littering.”

Staggs said the city sends out inmate crews to pick up the newspapers.

“They throw it out right before a rain, it gets wet and nobody wants to pick up a wet newspaper,” he said. “It just becomes mush.”

Mayor Hyram Copeland said two newspapers, The Natchez Democrat and The Concordia Sentinel, are distributed by subscription — The Natchez Democrat by contract carriers and The Sentinel by mail — and are not an issue.

Copeland said the periodicals in question are The Miss-Lou Buyer’s Guide, which is published by the same company as The Democrat, Natchez Newspapers Inc., and Miss-Lou Magazine, which is published independently by Peter Rinaldi.

Subscribers to The Natchez Democrat do not receive The Miss-Lou Buyer’s Guide.

“The Miss-Lou Buyer’s Guide has been delivered to select households in the area for decades,” publisher Kevin Cooper said Wednesday. “We have a system for stopping unwanted deliveries. All a resident, Mr. Staggs or Mr. Copeland, needs to do is call us at 601-442-9101, let us know their address, and we’ll stop delivery. It’s really quite simple and doesn’t involve government intervention.”

“That system has worked since before Mr. Copeland took office,” Cooper said. “I question why this has suddenly become an issue into which the mayor seeks to delve. It’s really a matter between the publications and the residents.”

Rinaldi said he has received only one complaint from Vidalia in the last year, and makes it a point not to deliver to empty houses or even those with yards that appear unkempt because his free newspaper business model doesn’t make sense being wasteful.

“I am not saying that once in a while there is not a newspaper in the gutter in Vidalia, but I monitor the streets, and if I see a paper in the street I stop and pick it up and put it in the log not to deliver there,” he said.

“I am happy to talk to anybody about any concerns they have, I know what the law is and we are doing delivery properly, and if anyone has an issue they can call me personally and I will handle it personally.”

Rinaldi said he believes the focus on the newspapers comes not from concerns about litter but because of critical editorial content.

“We have gotten some criticism recently from city officials about our content, but I assume it has more to do with that,” he said.

The city’s litter ordinance currently has some exceptions that allow for the distribution of fliers, pamphlets and newspapers.

City Attorney Scott McLemore said the publications would need to be reviewed in a case-by-case basis before any citations are issued.

“It depends on what the pamphlet or paper material is being distributed out,” McLemore said. “There are different categories and different exemptions.”

While Copeland argued that the ordinance could already be read to exclude non-paid newspapers since it includes a provision about the newspaper being “sold to the public,” McLemore said the matter needed a closer review and the ordinance might need to be revised to clarify the matter.

“The ordinance is very large, and if (a publication) fits into a category, we can figure out which category it belongs to and if the ordinance needs to be altered, we can do that.”

The board of aldermen did not take any official action on the matter Tuesday, but instructed McLemore to review the matter.

The Miss-Lou Buyer’s Guide and Miss-Lou Magazine faced a similar challenge in Natchez in the early 2000s. The matter went to municipal court and ended in January 2003 in favor of the publications.