Nicolet College, Pelican town board work toward mutual facility usage agreement

The Pelican town board and Nicolet College are closer to finalizing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two entities centered around mutual facility usage in special or emergency situations.

The matter was an agenda item for the Dec. 1 town board meeting and town chairman Nick Scholtes said afterward he’d been in discussion with Michael Dassler, the college’s risk compliance and safety manager.

He explained the town board has been working on an emergency operations plan (EOP) for the town.

“That’s something that’s updated yearly,” Scholtes said. 

One item he was looking at was an alternate location for town board meetings should something happen to the town hall that would render it unusable for a time. 

“Where would we hold our meetings and things of that nature,” Scholtes asked. “I was trying to think outside the box a little bit.”

With the college in the township, he contacted Dassler at the college and asked if something like a facility use MOU would be something the college might be interested in. 

“He said the college would definitely be interested in something like an MOU because they would like to be able to utilize the town hall as a reunification place in the event they had something happening at the college and they had to bus people out of there,” Scholtes said. “They would have a place where people could go and they can pick up family members.”

Scholtes said the town board agreed that was a good idea and tabled the matter until more details could be worked out. 

Friday, Dassler said at the Nicolet College end, board of trustee approval of the MOU isn’t necessary but college president Kate Ferrel has agreed with it. 

“That’s what we’re going to go with,” he said. “They (the town) did have a couple requests and verbiage I needed to adjust in the MOU.”

 Scholtes said the items he’d asked for inclusion in the MOU “are for town meetings and elections.”

“That’s the only things I’d asked for,” he said and he also said he’d have the MOU with Nicolet College on an upcoming town board meeting agenda.

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].