Abbeville receives award for winning Cleanest City contest

Prior to this year, Abbeville won the State Cleanest City Contest twice, once in 1986 and again in 2012.
The city captured its third title this year and a ceremony held Friday morning to present the award proved that the third time is the charm.
“I want to thank everyone for being here,” Abbeville Mayor Mark Piazza said happily. “I can’t tell you how excited we are about winning the Cleanest City Contest.”
Representatives of the Louisiana Garden Club Federation, which conducts the contest, presented the city with its plaque. State Clean City Chairman Jean Gilstrap said Abbeville which edged out Pineville, is a deserving winner.
“It is our privilege to present this award to the City of Abbeville,” Gilstrap said. “We do appreciate all that you put in to this.”
The last-minute efforts by volunteers played an important role in Abbeville taking a close win over Pineville.
“When you say it was close,” Gilstrap said, “you have no idea. It was splitting-hairs close. It came down to counting pieces of litter. I am not kidding. I counted pieces of litter.
“You won and I am very proud of you all.”
Piazza also announced that the city has officially been commended by the Louisiana Senate for its victory.
“They have given us an accommodation by form of a resolution from our local Sen. Jonathan Perry,” Piazza said. “We want to thank him for recognizing Abbeville in Baton Rouge.”
In Abbeville, and throughout the state, the Cleanest City Contest helps to serve an ultimate goal. The primary goal of the Louisiana Garden Club Federation, INC., is to become a litter free Louisiana. The Cleanest City Contest by example can help accomplish this goal by bringing cities together with a common objective, to clean their communities. The contest started in 1958 and is over 50 years old. They are the first and are still the only State Garden Club organization to have such a contest.
The Abbeville Garden Club, reorganized in 2012, applied and received its federation that same year. We began our journey for community improvement with 7 members. We now have 25 hardworking members. Our club motto is “Working Together for Community Beauty”. We have been fortunate in that Keep Abbeville Beautiful and the City of Abbeville are on the same page in working to keep our community litter free and safe. We thank all community entities that work with us to achieve our goal. The collaboration between the Mayor and Council, the various city departments, the Keep Abbeville Beautiful organization, Police Jurors, Solid Waste Department, Abbeville Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department in Vermilion Parish have enabled our club to work on several projects throughout the city of Abbeville.
The Louisiana Garden Club Federation, INC divides cities into 10 population categories in 8 districts. This insures that a town with a population of 300 is not judged within a city of 100,000. A panel of three volunteer judges visit participating cities and rate them on cleanliness. This begins on the district level in March and each community has to score 90 percent out of 100 to compete on the state level beginning in April. The points accumulated are derived from the following:
Book of Evidence. This book demonstrates community involvement, before and after pictures and educational projects.
It is especially important to have the approaches to the city clean.
The judges deduct if they see weeds around telephone poles, signs or weeds growing in the sidewalks and curbs.
The optimum selected route should include public buildings, parks, residential areas, vacant lots, library, hospital, fire station and a school.
The city’s route proved to be a winner.
“I want to thank everyone who helped make this happen,” Piazza said. “I want to thank the many volunteers and city workers for their efforts. This is a very exciting thing.
“It’s a wonderful thing for our community and something that we are very, very proud of.”