About four years ago, Tony Sanford took out a loan for his auto repair business in Vance County — not from a bank but from the Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Governments, a regional planning and development agency that covers Vance, Granville, Warren, Franklin and Person counties.
He used the $175,000 loan from Kerr-Tar’s revolving loan program to purchase new equipment and grow his business, which has been around for 29 years.