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Kent Co. Launches Program To Help Some Businesses Reopen

Kent County seal
Kent County

The Kent County Board of Commissioners recently allocated two million dollars of the County’s CARES Act funding to launch a new program.  “The Kent County Back to Work Initiative” will help small businesses get back to work with personal protective equipment.

“Right now, we’re providing eye and face protection, gloves, hand sanitizer and thermometers, to make sure that when people come back to work we understand what they’re health is, to help them to be screened and that they are protected.”

That’s Wayman Britt, Kent County Administrator and Controller.  He’s referring to the “Kent County Back to Work Initiative”.  The County Board of Commissioners recently allocated two million of the county’s 114 million dollars they received from the CARES Act funding to this initiative. To qualify, employers must be located in Kent County and must employ 100 people or less. Britt says they heard loud and clear from businesses that Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE  is important.  The PPE includes eye and face protection, gloves, hand sanitizer and thermometers. 

“It’s important that they come back safety.  So that we can keep this engine running.

And Britt says they took steps to make sure small businesses knew this was happening.

“We’re making sure that the small businesses, you know, 0 to 5 employees, the smaller ones, t that they all have an equal opportunity that they can access this.”

The call went out on Tuesday.   Requests had to be in before midnight tonight.  Britt says about 600 applications had been received as of yesterday, but he expects a lot more before the deadline.  It’s a random selection process.  With first round selections being made on Friday.

In the meantime, the program will continue accepting employer requests and running a daily random selection process as long as funding is available.  Britt says there may even be a second round.

Jennifer is an award winning broadcast news journalist with more than two decades of professional television news experience including the nation's fifth largest news market. She's worked as both news reporter and news anchor for television and radio in markets from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo all the way to San Francisco, California.