East Hartford is pausing its COVID-19 Small Business Program on Friday due to a heavy influx of applications.

CT River Valley Chamber of Commerce board member Jay Margnelli said that the program has had great success since it began in May.

When the program opened, many members of the local business community applied and/or started initial registrations and they have received more than 125 initial registrations and 65 applications, Margnelli said.

“There’s probably some more in my emails, now that the notification is out. I probably have some more in my emails … because a lot of the folks what they do is coordinated to our chamber …” he said.

The program, paid for through the American Rescue Plan Act, is administered by the town Development Office, with help from the Connecticut River Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Margnelli also said that in order for businesses to qualify for approval of reimbursement funding, there are four elements that must be met.

“You [have] got to show that your business was adversely impacted by COVID,” he said. “That this funding is going to provide the opportunity for business growth, and it’s targeted towards business expansion, [such as] purchasing of equipment that will help you grow and expand the business, the hiring of additional personnel, façade work or improvements. If you have a building and need some façade work to improve the aesthetic image of your establishment.”

About the timeline for when the applicants may know whether they’ve been chosen or not, Margnelli said that it is hard to say at the moment, as only three businesses have been approved so far, with four pending approval.

“We’ve got this whole backlog now of all these [applications] that we have to go through,” he said. “A lot of follow up work, because if they don’t provide us all the data, if people are doing specific work, they have to get a minimum of three quotes.

“Some of them didn’t send in all the quotes, we have to get back to them and make sure they have all that data. Then, we can make the decision. We’re going to try to take them in the order that they came in date wise too…we’ll try to navigate that and manage that accordingly,” he said.

Mayor Mike Walsh’s office issued a statement saying that the town is very pleased to see the interest in the small business assistance program, as the need has been justified for this level of assistance to the local business community.

“The purpose of the program was to provide financial assistance to those hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic and to help spur economic development in East Hartford post COVID,” the statement said.

“We are pausing the intake of applications for the moment to give our staff time to review the current applications we have and ensure that the funding is being spread enough to ensure maximum impact of this program to our community,” it said. “If we find that funding is still available after our review of current applications we will resume the program.”

The town encourages residents to monitor the town website for updates on the program at www.easthartfordct.gov/development-planning. The pause begins at the end of the business day on Friday and runs until further notice.