Business owners agree: Loans tough to come by

EVERETT — Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., met with
four local business owners Wednesday whose efforts to grow their
businesses have been stymied by banks that won’t loan them money.

Murray
was there to say she has one answer to the problem — a Senate bill
that would provide $30 billion to community banks to loan to small
businesses.

The bill has been stalled in the Senate in a partisan
stalemate, and it will be at least until September before Congress can
act.

The measure would provide higher loan guarantees for the
lenders and lower fees for borrowers and is intended to help small
businesses expand and hire more people. “We need to convince a few more
people,” Murray said Wednesday at Zippy’s Java Lounge in downtown
Everett.

Frank Lemos, owner of a Woodinville consulting firm,
said the community banks are the place to put the money because “bigger
banks are looking to buy smaller banks, not to make loans.”

Rosario
Reyes, owner of Las America Business Center in Lynnwood, said that
despite 20 years of doing business, her line of credit was called by her
bank. That dashed her dream of creating a business plaza and a training
center for her nonprofit group.

Marilyn Rosenberg, owner of
Zippy’s Java Lounge in Everett had excellent credit but couldn’t get a
business loan to install a better sign and add other improvements to
boost business.

Frank Lemos, owner of Land Development
Consultants of Woodinville, has the work and the contracts, but can’t
get the loans he needs to improve his cash flow. Since larger
corporations often don’t pay until four months after the work is done,
Lemos needs the loan to hire more workers until those payments are made.

Timothy
Robinson’s Applied Filter Technology Inc. in Snohomish converts biogas
to energy and has a backlog of contracted work. But he said nobody will
give him a loan to hire the workers he needs to grow. “We have to take
all our profits and dump them into the business to meet payroll,”
Robinson said.

– Everett Herald