The Miami Valley Educational Computer Association, or MVECA, located at 888 Dayton St., is set to merge with Centerville-based Miami Valley Communications Council. MVECA Executive Director and villager Thor Sage, shown above posing with large spools of fiber optic cables, said the merger will allow both organizations to expand their regional IT services and deepen MVECA’s local economic footprint. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
MVECA to merge with Miami Valley Communications Council
- Published: May 9, 2025
A Yellow Springs-based information technology provider, employer and landlord for nearly a dozen home-grown businesses is set to grow — and that may be good news, not just for Yellow Springs, but for the greater Southwest Ohio area.
In the next two months, the Miami Valley Educational Computer Association, or MVECA, is set to merge with the Miami Valley Communications Council, a municipal communications and IT organization from Centerville.
According to MVECA executive director and longtime villager Thor Sage, that merger likely means more IT jobs in Yellow Springs, expanded computer services to area governments and school districts — including Yellow Springs Schools — and more access to affordable and high-speed internet for regional public entities and area residents.
“This is a big deal,” Sage told the News in a recent interview. “MVCC’s entire operation will move here to Yellow Springs. This is a consolidation — one that allows us to grow both our operations together.”
MVECA, headquartered in a 94,000-square-foot facility at 888 Dayton St. at the western boundary of Yellow Springs, has, since its founding in 1980, grown into an IT organization that holds 350 service contracts with its members across eight area counties, including Greene. The nonprofit consortium currently employs 32 people; in the most recent fiscal year, MVECA garnered $13 million in revenues — matching its $13 million in expenditures. In 2024, it paid over $22,000 in income taxes to the Village.
Similar to MVECA in its mission, but distinct in its structure, MVCC is a municipal communications and technology organization that represents its eight member cities of Centerville, Germantown, Kettering, Miamisburg, Moraine, Oakwood, Springboro and West Carrollton.
MVCC was formed in 1975 as a council of governments to monitor, regulate and administer common cable television franchise agreements, manage the operation of the council’s cable access channels and more. In addition to the consolidation of assets and services, MVCC’s Centerville building will be sold by MVECA — additional money, Sage said, that will be invested in the Yellow Springs facility at 888 Dayton St.
“From that sale, we intend to invest heavily here,” Sage said. “That will absolutely benefit our tenants.”
Those renting space from MVECA include the YS Schools district offices, Bennett and Bennet, Honeycomb Archive, Kettering Health Network, Pamela Funderburg, Sharon Russell, Village Accounting and Tax, Vitality Blu Health and Medspa, Whitney Danielle Photography, Xylem and Yellow Springer Tees.
“In a way, this merger helps us retain jobs here in Yellow Springs,” Sage said.
There will also be 12 additional IT employees coming from MVCC to the MVECA offices here in Yellow Springs — thus adding to the income taxes generated from MVECA.
Structurally, Sage explained, the merger will create a new kind of “umbrella” under which MVECA and MVCC will continue their services — one that requires the creation of a new council of governments, which will assume responsibility and oversight of all business operations for both organizations.
The consolidation of MVECA and MVCC will occur under a new parent organization, the Miami Valley Technology and Communications Group, or MVTCG. Per a proposal penned by Sage, MVTCG will “serve education and government regionally,” with “the two organizations remaining intact as individual programs,” just with combined assets.
Those combined assets would create an array of services and contracts offered to 39 member organizations in both the public and private sectors, as well as approximately 176 associate member organizations such as 32 municipalities — including Yellow Springs — four educational service centers, 41 public school systems, 41 community/charter schools, 11 nonprofit organizations and many others.
For Yellow Springs’ part, the Village utilizes Internet services, including the state network — dubbed OARNet — through MVECA. As Sage told the News, MVECA also maintains the downtown Wi-Fi network, hosts equipment to support the “fiber-to-the-home” services in its data center and provides fiber optic network support as needed.
Village Manager Johnnie Burns told the News that he’s grateful for what MVECA provides the Village, and is looking forward to the added local boon from the upcoming merger.
“They already support our broadband system and provide downtown internet. They help us with cybersecurity and we’re looking into getting new phone systems through them,” Burns said. “So, absolutely I am excited for this merger. It should bring in some economic development and more jobs to the local area — helping with some income tax and putting Yellow Springs on the map in a big way, technology-wise.”
Efforts to expand the Village’s municipal broadband services to more Yellow Springs residents have stalled in recent years.
With the help of MVECA, a local citizens group, Springs-Net, began building out a fiber optic backbone in Yellow Springs about ten years ago. Then, in 2022, the Village took the first steps to launch a pilot broadband program — with the help of a $300,000 grant — that has since linked up more than 100 homes to the network. In recent meetings, though, some Village Council members expressed interest in selling off the system to a private enterprise with more capacity to better expand a local broadband service.
Still, Sage maintains the faith that the local system could one day be wielded by the Village as a kind of public utility.
“It’s holding steady,” Sage said of the local fiber backbone MVECA helped build. “Expansion is absolutely still possible. We passed by 600 homes and made provisions in the backbone for each one of those homes. The network is completely expandable.”
Sage added: “It’s just all about making a small local investment into the network, which, one day could mean revenues for the Village — a huge return on investment.”
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