Portage County adopts updated Emergency Operations Plan

The Portage County Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted an updated Portage County Emergency Operations Plan and related annexes after the county emergency management administrator presented a summary of changes.

The county’s emergency management administrator, Michelle Craig, told commissioners the plan was reformatted from multiple prior drafts and expanded with new sections. Major additions include an updated table of contents, a revised address for the relocated emergency operations center, an environmental response and worker health-and-safety section, a tactical interoperable communications annex, volunteer-and-donations management material, a revised hazmat cost-recovery procedure, an updated ESF-11 agricultural annex, an active-shooter/hostile-event response and recovery tab under ESF-13 (law enforcement), and a pre-disaster recovery plan (ESF-14) with debris management and continuity-of-operations tabs.

The commissioner leading the adoption motion said the update was necessary because “things change,” citing the new EOC location and lessons learned from recent incidents. Commissioners praised the emergency management team’s work on the large reformatting and content updates. The motion to adopt passed on a roll call vote of Sabrina — yes; Jill — yes; Mike Tinland — yes.

The new plan replaces the prior version and is intended to centralize emergency response protocols and annexes so county departments and partner agencies can follow a single, updated document. The administrator noted the updates had been prepared by the emergency management office and reviewed administratively; no additional formal amendments were proposed at the meeting.

The board did not attach a public-comment period to the adoption during the meeting. Implementation steps, such as training, annex distribution, or scheduled reviews, were not specified during the discussion.