By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
ST. JOSEPH, MI – The Berrien County Broadband Internet Taskforce (BC BIT) and the overall Berrien County Broadband Project has received recognition for their efforts from the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission.
News of the honor came at last week’s Berrien County Board of Commissioners meeting. SWMPC Executive Director John Egelhaaf told commissioners that the county has been awarded his organization’s prestigious Graham Woodhouse Award.
The Graham Woodhouse Intergovernmental Effort Award has been awarded annually since 1987 to recognize projects that exemplify intergovernmental cooperation. It is names after former Dowagiac Mayor Graham Woodhouse.
“Intergovernmental cooperation as well as cooperation with nongovernmental organizations are among the most difficult to execute,” Egelhaaf told commissioners. “They take a long time and take a lot of cooperation and collaboration. These are the type of projects that have a lot of value and need to be recognized.”
He said the criteria for the award include the relative degree of effort by local units of government and their partners, the scope of the project, the methodology and the project dimension.
“This year’s winner is the Berrien County Broadband project,” he said. “You had a really compelling submission. It was tremendous and our board voted this project as the winner with the extensive effort made to understand the existing conditions for broadband internet coverage and close the gaps.”
Egelhaaf outlined the history of the Berrien County broadband effort, which dates back several years. Highlights of the effort included initial efforts to document who had and didn’t have broadband service in the county, plus partnering with the Merit Network and DCS Technologies to survey residents and develop an accurate map. Then they used American Rescue Plan Act funds to bring broadband to the county.
The use of ARPA funds as well as partnering with Midwest Energy & Communications to get state ROBIN funds were the catalyst of getting the funds to expand broadband to underserved areas, he said. ROBIN stands for Realizing Opportunity with Broadband Infrastructure Networks.
MEC ended up getting $27.6 million from the state and contributed $15.5 million of its own money. In addition, Berrien County contributed $4.5 million of its ARPA funds with townships and villages contributing another $2.7 million. Three other Southwest Michigan counties also contributed $6.1 million.
Egelhaaf noted that construction on expanding broadband service in the county began in 2023 and is projected to be completed in the second quarter of 2026. 5,720 unserved households are getting internet, as are another 3,501 underserved households.
In addition to BC BIT and Berrien County, other broadband project partners honored were representatives of Merit, DCS, MEC, the Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber and the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, he said.
“Many thanks to you all for this really extraordinary work,” Egelhaaf said. “It’s so deserving of our award.”
“It’s thrilling to see the work that we have done as a body honored and have it coming close to fruition,” BC BIT Chairwoman and County Commission Vice-Chair Teri Freehling said. “Before we established BC BIT, we called ourselves the brain trust as we talked about what we wanted to achieve and the resources available.”
Former County Commissioner Ezra Scott was on hand to talk about how the effort started in 2018. “How all this got started was a very simple conversation I had with a mother at the fair,” he said. “Her daughter received an F grade because they had no internet and she had to get on internet to finish a project.”
“Kids should not be getting an F because we as adults aren’t providing the services they need,” he added. “I talked to Teri (Freehling) and others. We talked to farmers who are underprivileged in not having internet to know when to sell.”
Scott then related how he and Freehling traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with government officials. “We had a meeting with someone in the Commerce Department, and he told us that there are a lot of other people vying for the money…I said that’s fine but they’re not sitting in front of you right now … I told him I didn’t care if Kansas ever gets internet, I’m here for Berrien County.”
“Then we started working with SWMPC,” he said. “It’s important that this board had the foresight to do this for all the residents of Berrien County to get this jumpstarted and look where we are today.”
For her part, Freehling acknowledged the efforts of Regional Chamber Executive Director Arthur Havlicek. “Honoring him was a nod to all the townships,” she said. “He helped get them on board and write letters of support. Every single township saw the benefit of this for their communities.”
Past Graham Woodhouse Award winners have included the McCoy Creek Watershed Improvement Project in 2014, the Berrien Springs-Oronoko Township M-139 improvement plan and water and sewer project in 2016 and the Indiana-Michigan River Valley Trail in 2018.