The piles of stinky leaves were becoming an issue in my game, so I made a mod that automatically cleans them for you. You still get to play around with clean leaf piles, but when they get old and stinky the game will remove them from public places, just like it does with trash and old food. This is how I believe they should work and what I'be been waiting for in an official fix patch.
I didn't really like the sound of other mods I found for it, such as one that just makes leaf piles fresh forever, or that still requires manual clicking to remove piles.
If that interests anyone I could make it available for download, but I haven't really shared a mod before so I have no idea if it would work for other people. I only know that it works for me.