For 13 years, motorists on I-95 and pedestrians on side streets have seen teams of students and residents planting flowers and picking up trash to spruce up sections of Overtown. The beautification program, dubbed Roots in the City, has blossomed to provide a few regular jobs for hard-to-place workers.

That work came to an abrupt halt this week after someone stole power landscaping equipment that belonged to the program, which was created by former Florida International University professor Marvin Dunn.

Without the tools, five full-time and several part-time employees are out of work. Because of their histories, some of them may have problems finding other employment.

”We hire people who are hard to employ. These are Overtown residents who have police records, single mothers,” Marvin Dunn said.

The theft was discovered Tuesday when a work crew arrived at a storage shed at Overtown’s Culmer Community Center, 1490 NW Third Ave., to begin their shift, said Robert Dunn, project manager and Marvin Dunn’s brother.

The tools were worth about $5,000. There was no sign of a break-in, and Robert Dunn believes someone — perhaps involved somehow with the program — may have used a key to remove the equipment. He reported the theft to Miami police.

Miami police spokesman William Moreno said detectives would determine whether the stolen items had serial numbers and check if any items turn up at local pawn shops.

Among the items taken: lawn mowers, edgers, weed cutters and chain saws. The only tools left in the shed were a few manual trimmers, rakes and other lawn implements, Robert Dunn said.

”We were wiped out,” Robert Dunn said. “All we have now is a guy who comes in to do trash pickup in the morning until we get back on track.”

Roots in the City started in 1993 as a college classroom project, Marvin Dunn said.

Since the project’s inception, hundreds of students, residents and volunteers have kept the project going.

Some years, elementary students plant vegetable gardens. During the Martin Luther King holiday, civic groups and college students volunteer in civic beautification projects.

In recent years, the program was awarded a $20,000 contract from the county and the city to pick up litter and beautify two tracts of land near I-95 off-ramps. Those funds were used to hire workers for the program.

Irby McKnight, a community leader, said the gardens helped deter people from dumping debris.

”I’m sorry to hear about this. People like the gardens,” McKnight said. “I like what’s there now because I know what was there before. That hasn’t happened since the garden went in.”

Source: www.miami.com