Issue 12 of 12
The first transit levy in 24 years is on your ballot. Nobody should vote it blind.
On November 3 you will decide whether Delaware County Transit gets its first dedicated tax, a 0.2 percent sales tax, about $1 on a $500 purchase. It would roughly triple the budget of an agency now running on grants, fares, and its own dwindling reserves. Ryan is not here to tell you how to vote. That decision is yours. This page gives you the numbers, every one of them sourced, so you can make it with your eyes open.
See the numbers ↓0.2%
The proposed sales tax: 20 cents on a $100 taxable purchase, raising about $10.5 million a year. It would not apply where COTA's 1 percent already does.
Delaware County Transit levy page, 2026200,478
Trips DCT provided in 2025, up from 154,540 in 2024, all on-demand. Riders 65 and older took a quarter of them.
DCT 2025 ridership report, March 2026$2.2 million
The gap between income and expenses in DCT's own 2026 budget, covered by drawing down reserves. Savings are not a funding plan.
DCT 2026 budget by account, April 27, 2026Heads up
Transit is one of three county questions this November.
The same November 3 ballot carries two more countywide levies: a new 1.8-mill property tax for the Board of Developmental Disabilities (about $63 a year per $100,000 of home value, back after a 552-vote loss in May) and a renewal-plus-increase for the Delaware-Morrow Mental Health and Recovery Services Board. The transit question is the only one that is a sales tax instead of a property tax. Read all three before you get to the booth; the Board of Elections posts the official language for each.
Reported by the Columbus Dispatch, July 23, 2026, linked in the sources.
The data
An agency that got busy. A budget that runs on savings.
Both halves of the levy question, straight from DCT's own documents: demand is climbing fast, and the money underneath it is not.
Trips per year, before and after the switch to on-demand
2024 and 2025 are exact counts from DCT's ridership report; 2019 and 2023 are press-reported estimates; 2026 is the agency's projection (215,000 per 10TV, up to 225,000 per DCT's levy page). Hover any bar for the source.
DCT's 2026 budget, its own numbers
Who rode in 2025
Top trip purposes: work 25%, shopping 19%, social 15%, education 14%, medical 14%. Rides to jobs and appointments, not joyrides.
Straight answers
What people ask at the door.
What exactly am I voting on in November?
A new, permanent 0.2 percent sales tax for Delaware County Transit, the agency's first tax levy ever. Its board voted in July 2026 to put the question on the November 3 ballot. It works out to 20 cents on a $100 taxable purchase and would raise about $10.5 million a year, against the roughly $4.5 million the agency runs on today. It would not apply in the portions of Columbus, Dublin, and Westerville inside the county, because those areas already pay COTA's 1 percent. The last time county voters saw a transit levy was 2002, when the predecessor agency's request failed by more than two to one.
Who actually runs the buses?
Delaware County Transit, governed by a seven-member board that the county commissioners appoint under Ohio's county transit law. There have been no fixed bus routes since mid-2020; DCT now runs FLEX, an on-demand service in Delaware, Sunbury, and Galena where a ride costs $1 to $2, plus a countywide book-ahead service priced by distance. Day to day, professional staff run it. The board sets the direction, and the board answers to its appointing authority: the commissioners.
Who rides, and for what?
More people every year. DCT provided 200,478 trips in 2025, up from 154,540 the year before. Riders 65 and older took a quarter of all trips, riders with disabilities about a tenth, and the single biggest trip purpose was getting to work, ahead of shopping and medical visits. This is not a commuter rail fantasy. It is rides to jobs, dialysis, and the grocery store for neighbors who cannot drive.
What happens if the levy fails?
DCT's own budget answers this. In 2026 the agency plans to spend $6.75 million against $4.53 million of income, covering the $2.2 million gap from its reserves. Reserves are savings, and savings run out. The agency says a failed levy means operating at the current scope with likely staff and service reductions within a year. If it passes, DCT says it would run FLEX seven days a week, add zones in Powell, Liberty, and Orange townships, and offer same-day rides countywide. Both outcomes are on the table in front of you. That decision is yours.
What about COTA and the Columbus buses?
COTA's 1 percent sales tax covers only the slivers of Columbus, Dublin, and Westerville that reach into the county, and its LinkUS rapid-transit plans currently stop at Dublin, short of the county line and nowhere near Polaris. There is no fixed connection between DCT and COTA today; riders who need to reach Columbus use the book-ahead service. Anyone telling you a regional system is about to solve this county's rides has not read the maps.
Where can I check this myself?
DCT publishes its levy explainer, budget, and ridership reports at delcotransit.com, and the Board of Elections posts the official ballot language. The budget and ridership figures on this page come straight from the agency's own PDFs, linked below. The commissioners meet Monday and Thursday mornings at 9:30 in the Historic Courthouse at 91 North Sandusky Street, and transit board appointments come through that room.
Levers and limits
What a commissioner can actually do about transit.
The office does not drive a bus or count the fares. Its power over transit is quieter and real: it built the agency, and it staffs the board.
The board controls
The transit board itself. Ohio law lets commissioners create a county transit system, and Delaware County's commissioners did. All seven DCT board members are commissioner appointments, on staggered terms with a partisan-balance cap. Who sits on that board is the county's single biggest transit decision, made in the commissioners' room.
Money and bonds. The commissioners may advance county funds to the transit board, and the board cannot issue revenue bonds without their approval. The purse strings run through 91 North Sandusky Street even when the operations do not.
The growth data transit needs. Where the next decade's seniors, workers, and students will live is knowable from the county's own pipeline and planning data. Publishing that picture is the difference between sizing a transit system on purpose and sizing it by argument.
Convening the seams. COTA at the county line, Polaris employers, the senior services network, the career center: connecting them is nobody's formal job, which makes it the commissioners' actual job.
The board does not control
The levy. The transit board voted to place it, as Ohio law allows, without needing the commissioners' sign-off, and only the voters decide it. No commissioner casts a ballot on this except the one they cast as a citizen, same as you.
Daily operations. Routes, zones, hiring, and fares belong to the DCT board and its professional staff. Commissioners appoint the board and then let it govern.
COTA. A separate authority with its own board, its own 1 percent tax, and its own territory. Its LinkUS corridors currently end at Dublin. The county holds a voice in regional conversations, not a vote on COTA's board.
State and federal grant rules. Most of DCT's current money arrives with strings written in Columbus and Washington. The county spends within those rules. It does not write them.
The plan
What Ryan will do.
Put transit demand in the Forecast.
The 10-Year Growth Impact Forecast should show where the county's seniors, workers, and students will actually be, and what ride demand that implies, so that this levy and every future transit decision gets made against published numbers instead of dueling anecdotes.
Treat board appointments like the power they are.
Seven seats, all appointed from the commissioners' room, steering an agency that just carried 200,000 rides. Ryan will appoint for competence and independence, and expect DCT's finances reported plainly and publicly, whichever way November goes.
Work the seams nobody owns.
Rides that end at the county line, employers at Polaris whose workers cannot reach them, seniors whose trips cross township borders: these gaps sit between agencies, and the commissioners hold the convening power to put the right people at one table. That costs a meeting room, not a levy.
If nothing improves
The levy passes or fails on vibes instead of numbers, and either way the county keeps making transit decisions without a published picture of who needs rides and where. An agency serving a quarter of its trips to seniors keeps draining reserves, or grows without a plan tied to the growth that is actually coming. Blind votes make bad systems in both directions.
What better looks like
A county that decides transit on purpose: voters who saw the agency's real budget before marking a ballot, a board appointed for competence and watched in public, and a forecast that says where the rides will be needed before anyone argues about how to fund them. Whatever November decides, the decision deserves to be an informed one.
Sources
Last updated: September 2, 2026
You should not have to take a candidate's word for any of this. Every figure above traces to one of these sources, most of them the transit agency's own documents. Found an error? Tell the campaign and we will fix it.
Keep going.
Transit is a growth question wearing a ballot question's clothes.