YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County commissioners on Thursday allocated $750,000 of the $3.7 million they received from federal stimulus money through the CARES Act to help businesses.

The funds will be distributed by the Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp. on Belmont Avenue in Liberty to provide grants of up to $10,000 to small businesses to help them recover from the economic losses the virus has caused.

“They are in a position to implement this program quickly and expedite the grants because this is kind of their daily routine except on steroids, let’s say,” Anna DeAscentis, Mahoning County grants writer, said.

“There will be guidelines for who qualifies for the grants. These are grants with no payback,” she said. She suggested interested organizations check the Mahoning County Communicator website for the guidelines and probably the MVEDC website.

“The program itself will be for costs related to COVID response,” DeAsentis said. The costs can date back to March 1, and the end date is the end of November.

“Anything you can document as an expenditure for COVID will be taken into consideration,” she said. “We look forward to small businesses, farmers, nonprofits, anyone who feels they can qualify … we would recommend them to contact MVEDC or the web page to see if your intent is within the program,” she said.

“We all know small businesses that are not getting any help, and this will help them,” Commissioner Carol Rimedio Righetti said.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act is best known as the funding Congress approved in March that resulted in $1,200 stimulus checks being issued to millions of Americans to help them weather the coronavirus pandemic.

But it allocated money to counties across the country to help them weather the multitude of costs they are incurring to protect citizens.

For example, the county will use about $450,000 of the $3.7 million for county-building sanitization methods that were added to protect employees and the public.

In recent months, Mahoning County Administrator Audrey Tillis and DeAscentis put together a list totaling $3.5 million of projects, leaving another $200,000 that can be allocated later.

United Way has been allocated $325,000 to provide food assistance through existing programs it operates, and Catholic Charities will use about $150,000 to acquire an overflow homeless shelter.

The shelter is needed because the existing shelters have had to reduce the number of people they can accommodate to provide social distancing. The shelter is expected to be permanent, DeAsentis said. An unspecified location for the facility has been identified, she said.

Federal Community Development Block Grant funds might be able to provide the ongoing operating revenue for it, she said.

Other items being funded are $450,000 for wireless technology, laptops and cameras for video conferencing for the county — all changes that had to take place to convert most meetings to virtual meetings.

Another $150,000 is allocated to hold food drives, though the specific details of that program are not finalized.

The Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board will use $150,000 to pay to sanitize common areas in shelters for clients of of Compass Family and Community Services, Meridian HealthCare and Neil Kennedy Recovery Centers.

The county will get a second chance to allocate money still left by November, but the remaining money at the end of the year has to go back to the state and federal governments.