personal guarantees. >> the same. 20% ownership in the company. [inaudible] >> [inaudible] >> i heard something about sba guaranteed loans. maybe i missed something. does that have to do with the sba guaranteeing the entity? >> the question on the sba guaranteeing a entity as the order of the business, whether it is a corporation or partnership, for any small business lending, you should expect to be guaranteeing that long personally. as a small-business owner, from a lender's point of view, we want to see that you are as

invested in the business as you are asking the bank to be. the idea that non recourse loans, the way you describe it, loans that you get without having yourself personally liable is not the way it works. you should assume you will guarantee the loan regardless of the structure of your business. the good news, though, for businesses like you are describing, internet business, is that the capital requirements for that type of business is generally small. you are able to get yourself further along and share in revenues with a smaller amount of credit need. that is where we see a lot of businesses and personal service or internet business get started, and generate revenues and be able to show growth without needing any capital,

like a brick and mortar business might. >> my name is terry said. i have a retail business in san francisco for 22 years. i have a 5 04 -- 504 loan. it took me three years to get. we need more capital. i tried to get a line of credit from wells capital. i was decline. where does someone like myself go? i have a loan, i need additional funding. >> did you try through the sba? >> i already have an sba loan. i went to wells fargo for a line of credit and they would not give me one. >> i can speak to you about it. when we look at funds that are needed, the biggest thing we look at our cash flow.

i can address that with you. unless there is an issue, at that point -- [inaudible] >> let's talk, ok. >> i have a couple of more questions. i know that the panelists have agreed to stay after for those who have specific questions. i do have one question for wells fargo. what are the typical rules for applying for sba loan of less than $50,000? how much money do we need to have in your bank to apply for a loan? >> i am on the smaller side of the bank. i am a transaction guy. i do not technically require one to have an account to do a loan

with. what i look for, i generally start at 100,000 and up. when it is a requirement of 50,000 or less, i tend to call of the micro guys to help me out. that is right in their box. for us, the capacity for us to do the smaller side is not there as much as it is for them. on getting a loan through my side of the bank, i do not require an account to do that. we would like to have it, but i do not require it. >> last question for the opportunity fund and a critic representative. are you a cdfi? is san francisco and s.p.a. in

support of cdfi's being established in san francisco? >> yes, we are. we were founded in 1999 with a small business loan. that is how we started our tenderloin office. >> opportunity fund is a certified cdfi, so we are providing a benefit to low and moderate-income communities. he is the city establishing support for new cdfi's? >> mark wanted to address that, in support of cdfi's in the city. >> we have a wealth of partners in the city.

s.p.a. is just now rolling out a program for r -- will be the case by the summer. let me get one last point and on the question about relationships to lenders. the question was, do have to have an account with a bank in order to get a loan? may answer is no, but the real answer to it is certainly want to do that. one of the things we see as an important thing for you, as a small-business person to establish a relationship with a lender on a variety of levels before you look for funding. part of that is opening an account with them, letting a lender know about your business, understand your business, talk to them as you are growing your business. when the economy is strong, all lenders are shopping for transactions. in times are tough on credit,

you want to rely on those deeper liberation ships with your lender. you want to develop a relationship with a lender. it is the case where you want to open up an account, while to have another bank services that you want to have a relationship with your lender with it because when you go to them for any loan requests, you want them to know about your business and feel like they are a partner of yours, not just that you are shopping them. if you are shopping, you are just looking for the best deal from them, rather than a long- term relationship. >> i want to thank everyone for coming. hopefully, you have all signed up for our updates. we are going to be hosting these on a regular basis. the next two coming up will focus on becoming a government contractor, how your small business can partner with the government. the next one will also be on how

to grain your business, with tax -- green your business, tax credits available with that. for non-profit, charitable organizations, we have a workshop coming up. that is helpful for those of you who are looking to access the committee on a durable basis. >> also, on behalf of leader pelosi, i want to thank our panel and her staff. we are tenants in this building. i apologize for the security situation that happened upstairs. if you have concerns about it, please come and see me. i would like to convey those to the landlord here so that it does not happen again. thank you.

because we have a great waste water system here in san francisco, we do about 80 million gallons of waste water here in san francisco, which means we basically fill up 120 olympic sized swimming pools each and every day here in the city. we protect public health and safety and environment because we are discharging into the bay and into the ocean. this is essentially the first treatment here at our waste

water treatment facility. what we do is slow down the water so that things either settle to the bottom or float to the top. you see we have a nice selection of things floating around there, things from bubble gum wrappers, toilet paper, whatever you dump down the toilet, whatever gets into our storm drains, that's what gets into our waste water treatment and we have to clean. >> see these chains here, this keeps scum from building up. >> on this end in the liquid end basically we're just trying to produce a good water product that doesn't negatively impact the receiving water so that we have recreation and no bad impact on fish and aquatic life. solids is what's happening. . >> by sludge, what exactly do you mean?

is that the actual technical term? . >> it's a technical term and it's used in a lot of different ways, but this is organic sewage sludge. basically what it is is, oh, maybe things that come out of your garbage disposal, things that are fecal in nature. it's sludge left in the water after the primary treatment, then we blend those two over and send them over to digestion. this building is built to replace tanks here that were so odoriferous they would curl your hair. we built this as an interim process. >> is there a coagulant introduced somewhere in the middle of this? . >> this coagulant brings solids

together and lets the water run through. that gives us more time in the digestion process, more time to reduce the amount of solids. these are the biggest ones in the world, like we always like to do in san francisco. they are 4 meter, there's none like it in the world. >> really? wow. >> three meters, usually. we got the biggest, if not the best. so here we are. look at that baby hum. river of sludge. >> one of the things is we use bacteria that's common in our own guts to create this reduction. it's like an extra digestion. one of the things we have to do to facilitate that is heat that sludge up and keep it at the temperature our body likes, 98.6 degrees. >> so what we have here is the heat exchanger for digester no. 6. these clog up with debris and

we're coming in to -- next wet weather season so we always come through here, clean them out, make sure that we get maximum heat exchange during the colder wet weather. sludge season. >> rubber glove. >> right here. >> rubber glove, excellent. all right, guys. >> thank you. >> good luck. >> this is the full on hazmat. . >> residual liquid. we're taking it time to let it drain. we don't want to get sludge on it necessarily. take your time. stand on the side of it. . >> should we let it release for a while? . >> let it release. >> is that the technical term?

. >> this is the most important bolt on the whole thing. this is the locking bolt. it locks this thing right in place. so now. >> take your hammer and what we want to do, we get rag build up right in here. the hot water recirculates right in here, the sludge recirculates in here. the sludge sometimes has rags in it. all we want to do is go around the clean the rags. let me show you how. take the slide hammer, go all the way through the back, go around. >> got you. >> during the real rainy season, how does that change the way dealing with this job? is it a lot more stuff in there? . >> what we do, charles, we do this quarterly. every four months we go around

and clean all the heat exchangers so we don't have a large build up. . >> go around? . >> yeah. (sound of hammering). >> what i'm trying to do, charles, is always pull it out on the low stroke. >> right. so you are not, like, flying out. now talk about clean up. . >> then where does this stuff get deposited? . >> we're going to dump it in a

debris box and it will go back to the plant. >> if you think back, the romans came up with a system of plumbing that allowed us it use water to transport waste away from the hub of civilization, which enabled cities to grow. . >> you have a large bowl, a drive motor and another motor with a planetary gearbox with differential pressure inside there. the large mass up there spinning separating the solids from the liquid. we have to prevent about once a month, we go in there grease those, change the oil, check the vibration levels. the operators can tell just by the hum of that machine that it's a harmonic noise emitted that it's out of balance and the machine needs to be cleaned.

it will start vibrating and we have vibration analysis machines that will come over here and check the levels. so it's kind of an on-going thing that you have to stay on top of on a daily basis. >> handled properly, you take organic residuals, as we call them, that are leftovers of our society and turn them back into some energy. and we have another ability to take that sludge and get a nutrient value for crops there. we actually are running a kind of composting energy recovery system. >> well, this is a dirty job. we try to do it safely and we try to do it without imposing too much on the public. people want to flush their toilets and have things go away and not be bothersome again. we do a lot to try to accomplish that. i'd like to invite you to come

back any time you want. once you got this in your blood, you are not going to be able to stay away. the raging waters are fun and when we do digester cleaning i really hope you can come back. that's quite a sight. >> yeah, that sounds interesting. >> i really appreciate you coming by and it was a >> you can see that it is amazing. you can hear that it is refreshing. you reach for it because it is irresistible. and the taste. simply delicious. san francisco tap water. it engages the senses. 311 is an important resource for all san franciscans. should