The City of Abbeville did not win this year’s state Cleanest City Contest and finished a disappointing fourth place out of four cities the size of Abbeville.

Winning in the District VIII, Category G was Pineville for the second year in a row.

Eunice was second and Denham Springs was third.

“We are disappointed,” said Charlene Beckett, Abbeville Main Street Manager. “The city workers and volunteers worked so hard to clean up. Every one did a fabulous job. I think we should have won and what could we do differently for next year?”

The cities were informed Saturday in an e-mail.

Jean Gilstrap of the Louisiana Garden Club Federation Cleanest City Competition informed everyone.

“It (voting) was very close,” said Gilstrap. “My advice is that Abbeville needs to just fine-tune. There was tall grass in certain places.”

The committee, comprised of four women, rode through designated sections of Abbeville and judged on how well kept neighborhoods were, including sidewalks and buildings.

She was impressed with Abbeville and how clean the city was, considering it was the first time the City had been judged on the state level in years

In the next two weeks, Gilstrap will inform the Cities of the positive and negatives of what the committee saw.

She added there was very little difference between first place and fourth place. However, she did not have a point total difference among all four cities.