A series of meetings is being held over the next three months for community leaders throughout Berrien County to discuss a mass transit plan now that the Michigan Department of Transportation has made it clear it wants a replacement to be created for the Twin Cities Area Transportation Authority.

The Healthy Berrien Consortium consists of partners including the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission, the Berrien County Health Department, and the United Way, among many others. County Health Officer Guy Miller tells us they’ve been talking transportation for about a year now, but the recent communication from MDOT is speeding things up.

“We didn’t anticipate that MDOT would release this letter, so I think there’s a lot more attention on this now and maybe a little bit more pressure on this now to come up with kind of a consensus,” Miller said.

The first of six meetings was held Thursday. Southwest Michigan Planning Commission Director John Egelhaaf tells us they’re breaking the whole transportation question down into three parts — service, governance, and funding. Thursday’s meeting started with that discussion about service delivery.

Eglehaaf says the talks started out pretty high-level.

“It’s a foundation in the way that service delivery functions elsewhere and the way ideally it could function,” Eglehaaf said. “And then we pick up how to incorporate that into a new system that has unique needs here.”

Eglehaaf says there will be one more meeting on service delivery, followed by two meetings each on the other areas of concern over the next three months. From that, it’s hoped the consortium could come up with a plan to advocate for at the county level.

In all about 25 officials attended Thursday’s meeting, including representatives from the county, TCATA, the health department, and the Area Agency on Aging.