The Gloucester Board of Supervisors, meeting virtually, voted unanimously on Tuesday to appropriate $512,000 of COVID-19 Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funds to support local businesses through a program of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission.
The MPPDC’s COVID Adaptation Program will include all of the localities of the Middle Peninsula. Gloucester County Administrator Brent Fedors said it will provide a backstop for counties seeking to ensure they’re following federal guidelines for spending the funds.
The original request from the MPPDC was $112,000, with $12,000 of that covering the initial cost for supporting the program and the rest to be used to support qualifying local businesses. However, Gloucester supervisors’ chairman Phillip Bazzani said that $100,000 was too little to dedicate to the businesses of Gloucester and that those funds would be gone quickly. The board agreed.
Fedors advised the board not to allocate more than $500,000 for the project since t...