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ST. LOUIS — Aldermen on Tuesday advanced a plan to reboot a $37 million business grant program for cash-strapped north St. Louis — but not before one alderman blasted the others for leaving out struggling South Side neighborhoods.

“It is painfully clear that my colleagues are not familiar with the disinvestment that has occurred in southeast city,� said Alderman Shane Cohn, of Dutchtown.

The argument was only the latest flare-up over a program that has been generating controversy since its conception two years ago, when the city first began working on plans to deploy nearly $500 million in federal pandemic aid. There have been fights over its legality, ties to corruption and, now, its very function.

But Cohn’s impassioned dissent was notable coming from someone who backed the original bill and who usually supports efforts backed by Mayor Tishaura O. Jones.

The program itself has had a rough go. First, city officials fought over how exactly to send money to the North Side. After the grant program was established, some of those who pushed it were indicted for bribery, among other charges. Then officials froze the grants — after receiving almost 200 applications — because, they said, it was unclear how to award the cash.

On Tuesday, Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, of the West End, told the board’s development committee that her bill would set the program right.

The bill contains guidelines for ranking applications. It cuts out a requirement that businesses be endorsed by their local alderman to receive money, a provision that raised eyebrows after its chief architect, former Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, was indicted in the bribery scheme last year. And it makes businesses from across north city eligible for money rather than just those on its main thoroughfares, which officials said were too limited in scope.

But Cohn said if the city is going to open up the program, it should open it to businesses in poor neighborhoods on both sides of Delmar Boulevard.

He said areas like Gravois Park, Marine Villa and Dutchtown have many of the same problems that haunt the North Side: Rampant poverty. Vacant buildings. Rolling gun battles in the middle of the day.

“I have gunfire in front of my house every week right now,� he said.

He described overwhelming problems with homeless people roving the streets and alleys.

“They are squatting in the vacant buildings that line our blocks,� he said.

He also mentioned the neighborhoods’ high concentration of children, who are particularly vital in a city that has lost two-thirds of its population since 1950. And he said that many of the residents and business owners who haven’t yet fled the area are people of color and immigrants, fighting every day to keep going.

But Hubbard pushed back, saying her bill was about north St. Louis and addressing the historic wrongs its residents have endured for decades. She said Cohn’s push to include southside neighborhoods was divisive and would take opportunity away from the 181 North Side enterprises that have already applied for grants.

“We committed to them,� she said. “We should continue to commit to them.�

She also argued that having the grant program benefit north St. Louis doesn’t preclude another program from targeting Cohn’s area in the future.

Neal Richardson, CEO of the city’s economic development arm, said the city is putting resources into the southeast side to help young people and the unemployed get jobs.

Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier, of Tower Grove East, saw a difference between disinvestment in Cohn’s neck of the woods and disinvestment on the north side. She said the latter was racially motivated and that she saw Hubbard’s bill as something specifically tailored toward making up for that.

The committee voted 4-0 to recommend that the full board pass Hubbard’s bill at a later meeting. Cohn voted present.

Cohn, in an interview after the meeting, continued to vent. He said the city hasn’t allocated a dime of federal pandemic aid specifically for the southeast side of the city — though he did secure $200,000 for improvements to Marquette Park. And he said his colleagues didn’t know what they were talking about when it comes to the South Side.

“They all think it’s Shaw,� he said, referring to the affluent neighborhood north of Tower Grove Park. “It’s ridiculous.�

Jacob Barker of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.