coming for taking the time to provide comments to us so the first person who was signed up to speak is larry peterson larry business revenues because by construction  our public comment that was delivered last year as part of the process under appendix b of the current we are yes it refers to all new volume one of the  addressed the following topics it does not indicate what efforts were done through i allow relocation funding for businesses who have been displaced by this project  pursued why those businesses left  of the actual players b two thousand and nine study actually found that sixty percent of central corridor businesses were very concerned about the impact this project would have on their business adequate evidence that there are clearly has been an adverse impact on businesses really it is irrelevant ah all that was intended to do was evaluate services that may have been provided to mitigate losses so i don't think that is a problem devalue in this businesses so to spend all of this time and money evaluating whether an alternative form of transportation does or does not benefit the central corridor is not only not was business revenues and yet it is relegated to mere discussion of one out of six categories and yet this judge ordered that that be the only category that should be program which only one third of all businesses ever received enough money to cover the losses and two thirds had losses in excess of the whole program or the amo say and then we should talk about what are the options available to businesses to spend all these pages talking about mitigation services that may or may not have addressed all other types of issues it just is not what the judge ordered it's not what we're here talking about we're going to talk about how you put it protect businesses how you system is a service and to say that there's been no adverse impact on businesses but then to turn around and spend pages talking about the fifteen million dollars that has been thrown at this project it is being called mediation i think is an insult to business thank you very much i mean a two point five percent as a business owner i can use i can plan ahead for two point five percent and we did unfortunately we took over and you percent loss and with that being said in two thousand and twelve we took have to complete four years of impact and actually in two thousand and twelve close our intersection for forty two consecutive days it's twenty one days on the north twenty one days on the sols we are the south three days before it up starting in thousand forty feet a track in front of our store for two years it was impossible from the finished product to two thousand and one that tracks stored there but throughout the whole process they told us no you'll be impacted from hundred fifteen lost a lot of the people that have been involved in coming in and talking to this active drug business we've lost or seventy businesses and probably even more than that that people don't know that haven't responded to the questionnaires but we've got articles in the paper that are pretty substantial and we take a look at things like this this is very very to the point how can this happen it's just been terrible i can't explain it any differently this is than the one of the worst experiences i've had and as a small business owner you would think that the elected officials of the city would really be standing behind us whether or not they're more interested in baseball stadiums fifty five million dollars baseball stadiums it's a priority we really need to address our priorities  i put together a little packet of information i was involved in this back in march of two thousand and eleven that was part one i put together part two we put a lot in here my last revenues are in excess of four hundred thousand remarks revenues in excess of four hundred thousand dollars i got my taxes done i can show you i can verify those documents the project was under plan as far as i'm concerned you didn't consider the small business is not all we didn't care and maybe that was the plan we give or the small businesses and you put in some new stuff we bring in the big box and the people with the deep pockets do that was the point and i don't know we have worked with them in minority media coalition representing asian americans hispanics american indians and african americans rebuild my views on the central quarter of all no one since i run for congress in the fourth congressional district in both two thousand and ten and two thousand and twelve and the big deal in two thousand and twelve i attended a lot of family forum with both the need to mitigate the damages and said it had been admitted that mistakes were made because this was the biggest transportation project that ever done and they could not get their mind around it she suggested lifting ideas to pay off those who were immediately damaged but these are long term and widespread damages that we need to mitigate i have a positive press recovered earlier to help to build this train off the university avenue so we work with the midway chamber of commerce to oppose it and stop with the stimulus bill in two thousand i didn't call it was able to get stimulus dollars directed to this dangerous destructive process and i think the union people project will show that red supposedly had a high speed rail was supposed to come to st paul from milwaukee and chicago and does not have the federal court to take note that the adverse impact can be mitigated washington and the metropolitan council will adopt as i wrote the sixteen to study available parking for parking right around st i understand there is a state plan for part of a lot of we build a park ride there and then lowered we can build a great downtown with successful retail businesses and retain it to add to the cultural assets and government operations we can show america how to build a great citation or for that and what is the criteria by which you decided it was a positive because from my perspective a positive would mean that offered a positive outcome and nights and strengthen the avenue rather than tick away from the avenue or remain stagnant so i would say that it's minimally be a neutral outcome additionally and look at the same with the vacancy rates you found that to us to beat that as a stable rate to be positive and again i would say that that would be neutral because there wasn't necessarily an increase a decrease in  also in the the so at the end of the family three actually evaluate the various alternatives you found that the impact on business revenue was actually moderate which is different than what you put lots of it and packed this morning carrying her health organization and state that they lost thirty percent of their income also during the construction and well as the majority of the small business loans where your wild ones there were selling your two homes and there we didn't feel that there was a real use of the qualitative data that little mekong or asian economic development association method to influence any of the findings are there we also found that the study did not take into account additional expenses that businesses experienced such as having to pay for signage advertising our promotional at how it is a fact lower income businesses are minority businesses as opposed to other businesses so  answer so it is i'm also saying that surprisingly i think that the people here tonight are the optimists despite what you hear because we're here because we think we can make a difference right i did a lot of and it's not because it's the end of the project it's partly because the party can they don't see anything else that happened but it's also because they have tried to get help throughout the construction period they used a hotline summer and so they don't so they don't see how anything else could help them at this point so you know i think it's really sad that sometimes people come together under hardship and not unite people but this is really  drastically disenfranchised our community there's very little say that the systems that are there to help them are going to help them and be there for them and so they feel very much on their own and i think tha my automobile business when the light rail construction started i have since february when they started dating i have closed my car wash now i have close and i was forced to sell my original os that i started to enterprise rent a car at a reduced rate or reduced value because i had cash flow problems  i have i will not be opening up the car wash again because the business is gone or it won't come back the way the construction the design you can't access the car wash or a student like you used to be able to and i was also told the light rail also came along and took the first ten feet of the litter view applied which in the car business here curb appeal is very important they took that to start construction material on equipment they said where you can operate your business behind us well how are you going to sell cars when you can't see so i ended up shutting both of those businesses down in order to survive i went out and bought another car lot of which i jumped into debt at sixty years old for another million five which i didn't want to do but in order to survive and keep going i had to do that as i said i had to sell the property to enterprise at a reduced rate and my car washes and i provide it i mean it's operable but it's not worth opening because the access was there seven years ago i spent three hundred thousand remodeling that which is gone and my opinion and the whittaker lot i mean i've you know i've been paying taxes and insurance and all they have to keep on these properties and i'm able to use them and i've been there since eighty nine and it's just ironic to me that they can come in here and do these projects and then take businesses that have been there for many years and just send them to us at the project draw office or you can