>> good morning commissioners my name is clifton birch and president of construction and on behalf of the golden state bridge, we are listed as a subcontractor for the ybi ramps. we are a certified dbe firm as well as an lbe of san francisco and district ten. this will be an injustice to my firm if we cannot be allowed to perform on this project. i believe that the goal of the sfcta is to impact dbes as well as lbes of san francisco, and other small businesses. and in closing i believe that it is in the best interest of sfcta to award the contract to state bridge contractors for this particular project. as the lowest responsible bidder for this project as it was stated before me. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you very much. >> next speaker. >> good morning. my name is louis and i am the president of municon consultants and this is a homecoming for me and we have been in business for 23 years and one of the notable projects is 850 rolls of film photographing the san francisco city hall retrofit. we have had a long and favorable relationship with many of the contractors in

working with a lot of local businesses and we asked clifton to come up and tell us his story. [ applause ] >> good evening, everyone. my name is clift on birch. we are here to face all the diversities and challenges in our community. as a high school graduate and college drop out, my father was in construction union. i was thinking i wanted to be the best laborer. i showed up everyday and ready to work and eager to learn. these methods put me ahead of the game. after work is close to 20 years on labor on many different projects, one can say i was well-rounded. i excelled in in craft and moved up the food chain. i heard a co-workers said he should have gotten his contractors license and a light came on. i sought my contractors license. i was one of the key employees. i thought i finally made it when there wasn't many black foremans and superintendant. that same year i obtained my contractors license. [ applause ] i had no idea i would be doing business. this was in fact a personal accomplishment of mine of a college degree. i continued to work for that company for two more years. it was not until 2007 when i quit my $100,000 job to my multimi