Highly sought after COVID-19 Relief Block Grant money will soon be on its way to many Carbon County businesses and organizations after commissioners announced the successful applicants for $3.66 million of funding Thursday.

The CARES Act money was given to the county earlier this summer to support businesses, municipalities, nonprofits, educational institutions and county expenses associated with the pandemic.

“It’s time to cut the checks,” Commissioner Rocky Ahner said. “We’ve been sitting on this pretty long. I hope we can get this money out as soon as possible. Our committees did a lot of work as the rules kept changing, so I want to commend them for everything they did.”

The county received 221 applications for the grant money totaling approximately $14.83 million in requests. While the request amounts were uncapped, commissioners set the ceiling at $100,000 for any one disbursement. Several applicants were awarded the maximum $100,000, including the Beacon 443 Restaurant in Lehighton, Capriotti’s catering business in McAdoo, F.J. Lesher General Contractor in Palmerton, Country Inn and Suites hotel in Lehighton, Palmerton Memorial Park Association, Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau and the Blue Mountain Resort in Palmerton.

“There were a lot of changes to the rules along the way, but we stuck to our original plan, which was to get this money to small business to help them,” Ahner said.

The county opened the application period in July and then formed review committees to parse through submissions. Around 20 of the applications were listed as ineligible or having been withdrawn on a spreadsheet detailing the final funding amounts. The spreadsheet was posted on the Carbon County website, at www.carboncounty.com/documents/commissioners/corona/transparency-spreadsheets/9-17-20.pdf.

Carbon was awarded $5.79 million from the state to disburse. Requests ranged from $51 to almost $2 million.

Commissioners said they would hold $777,000 over for a second round of funding. That amount could balloon to $1.2 million if the county doesn’t hand out a half-million dollars it set aside for broadband projects.

“If there are not viable broadband projects, my recommendation is that these funds are put into tourism, small business, nonprofits and municipalities for the second round,” Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said in an email.

Ahner said he hopes a second round of applications can move along more swiftly as the county faces an end-of-the-year deadline for distributing funds.

“It will be my recommendation to commence a second round submission period from Oct. 15-30 utilizing the same process as this first round and given priority consideration to those who have not previously applied,” Lukasevich said.

There is also $118,512 pending for fire companies that applied for block grant funds.

“We had a lot of fire companies who had also put in for funding through another grant,” Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said. “We’ve set aside money because we wanted to make sure funds were available for those departments should those other grants fall through for any reason.”

A motion on Thursday’s agenda to increase the maximum paid to Zelenkofske Axelrod LLC for financial consulting services from $87,500 to $187,500 was tabled by commissioners. The extra money is due to additional services related to the COVID-19 block grant.

Lukasevich recommended the motion be tabled because the county’s administrative fees for the block grant can’t exceed $115,924.

“I just want to go back and make sure we are within the Department of Community and Economic Development’s guidelines,” he said.