KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Changing Troost to Truth. That’s the push from one local business owner who talked in front of Kansas City’s City Council Thursday.

Troost Avenue is named for Dr. Benoist Troost, who was a slave owner in the 1800’s.

At the business session of Thursday’s City Council meeting, survey results were released about how people feel about the name change. 1,027 people took part. Just more than 55% of the respondents said they agreed with the renaming of Troost Avenue. Just more than 44% say they didn’t agree.

“I’m excited that we even got the opportunity to share, to give facts, to talk about this unprecedented level of awareness that has been generated around this topic,” Ruby Jean’s Juicery CEO and Founder Chriss Goode said in an interview with FOX4 after his talk to the city council.

Goode has supported changing the name of Troost Avenue to Truth Avenue. He talked to the city council during the session about why he thinks the street name should be changed.

“Do you want this city to be known as segregated? Should it be, ‘This is the red line. Black people stay there. White people stay there. Gay people stay there. Hispanic people stay there. Jews stay here. Jewish people stay here.’ That’s the way it’s always been right? So, I don’t think that that should be,” he said afterward.

If you break down the numbers, about 570 of the respondents said they agreed with the renaming of Troost. Nearly 460 of them said they didn’t agree. City Council member Kevin O’Neill said he did not know that Troost was a slave owner while he was growing up here.

“In my community, if there was somebody that was rewarded for bad behavior, they should be punished and we actually exalted them, so I don’t have a problem with that,” O’Neill said to FOX4 after the session ended.

Because this was the business session, no vote was taken. If the street name would be changed, it would have to go through the ordinance process by going through a committee. Then, the full city council would vote on it.