HARTFORD — As businesses around Hartford get ready to reopen over the next few weeks, the town wants to ensure employees and customers are still wearing face masks.

At a meeting Tuesday, the Selectboard unanimously approved a motion to allow the town’s Committee on Coronavirus Response to spend up to $3,000 on reusable masks. The masks would be distributed to Hartford businesses for use by employees and customers.

Many businesses are preparing to reopen next month after Vermont Gov. Phil Scott relaxed some orders surrounding COVID-19 restrictions.

His announcement last week extended the state of emergency until June 15 but he also signaled that some close-contact businesses, such as hair salons and barber shops, might be allowed to open in June.

“We were thinking about how to encourage mask use as a way of preventing a spike (of COVID-19 cases) from causing us to shut the economy back down after it starts to open up,” Selectboard member Simon Dennis said in the meeting, which was held by videoconference. Dennis is also on the Committee on Coronavirus Response, which brought the proposal about distributing masks to the board this week.

Selectboard members do not know where the masks will come from, though they discussed using a local source, which would make and sell them to the town for $7 apiece, and a national chain that would sell them for around $2.50 apiece.

The source of funding is also still under consideration, though Dennis said the response committee has applied for grant funding.

But board member Alan Johnson said it’s imperative to ensure any potential funding is already approved when it does come in, so masks can be distributed to businesses as quickly as possible.

“Let’s get as many masks as we can to as many people as we can as quickly as we can,” he said.

The plan to distribute masks was just one of 12 suggestions posed Tuesday by the response committee, which was formed in early April and comprises residents and town staff, including Town Manager Brannon Godfrey and some board members. Their suggestions included urging residents in the town to wear masks when they go out and designating a volunteer COVID-19 communications officer, who would frequently update residents on the virus.

Along with masks, one of the most talked-about suggestions at Tuesday’s meeting was the proposal to allow the Hartford Business Revolving Loan Fund to grant $1,000 to $2,000 loans to small businesses that have suffered financially due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

Typically, the fund is used to provide loans that can be around $50,000 to $100,000 to small businesses as they start up, with the understanding the business will pay the town back over time, Dennis said Tuesday. The response committee’s proposal would issue much smaller loans that would be “potentially forgivable,” according to the proposal.

“Relatively small loans could make the difference between a business going under and disappearing, and a business being able to make it through the period of the quarantine,” Dennis said.

Selectboard members were supportive of the idea, including Selectboard Chairman Dan Fraser, who is also on the committee and who said helping businesses stay afloat would be beneficial to Hartford in the long term. But Johnson wondered if the money could come from another source.

The Selectboard voted unanimously to have officials who oversee the revolving loan fund develop a “brief analysis” of how feasible the forgivable loan proposal could be, and bring it in front of the board at a future meeting.

On the state level, Scott’s administration is weighing the financial impact the virus will have on businesses as well. On Wednesday he announced a $400 million economic relief package to provide help for Vermont businesses including retail, food, lodging and agriculture.

Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.