Stark County NET Transportation: Five Van Vendors, SARTA Passes, and County-Run Scheduling

Stark County, home to Canton, Massillon, and Alliance, does its own NET scheduling. The county’s job and family services office (Stark County JFS) answers the phones, decides who rides, and picks which of its five van vendors drives each trip. No broker sits in the middle, so the vendor contracts, and the commissioners who approve them, are where the work and the money are.

How Stark County NET rides work

Ohio Medicaid pays each county job and family services office to arrange the rides a health plan does not have to give, under rule 5160-15-10, and each county chooses how. The Ohio guide covers the plans and their brokers, and county NET contracts in Ohio compares how the counties buy rides.

In Stark, a rider calls a NET coordinator at 330-451-8486 or 330-451-8449 and gives a Social Security number, the appointment date and time, and the doctor’s name, building, address, and phone. The county asks for five business days’ notice for every trip, recommends calling three to five business days ahead, and does not guarantee a trip called in with less than 48 hours to go. The coordinator then authorizes one of two kinds of help:

• A SARTA bus pass. The county mails it, so it needs 7 to 10 days. For each appointment, the doctor or facility fills in an Appointment Confirmation Form, which the rider mails back to the NET coordinators in the envelope provided.
• A van ride. Curb-to-curb service from one of the five contracted vendors, for riders who hold a regular Medicaid card and can move from a wheelchair into the vehicle on their own.

Riders are told to be ready an hour before the appointment, that they may share the vehicle with other riders, and that pickup happens when it fits the vendor’s schedule. A rider waiting more than 30 minutes after an appointment can call the number the driver gave or ABCD’s line, 330-455-2699, and late arrivals and late pickups go to the NET coordinators as complaints. A companion can ride if the coordinators know ahead of time. A trip to a doctor outside Stark County needs an out-of-county referral form from the doctor, and the Ohio Auditor of State’s June 2025 audit counted Stark among the counties that give rides only to appointments inside the county.

The county also sends riders to other programs first. Its NET pages say nursing home and long-term care facility transportation, and Pregnancy Related Services, must be used before NET, and that health plans, home and community-based waiver programs, and Healthcheck may be.

Who holds the Stark County NET contracts

On July 9, 2025, the Stark County commissioners approved five Non-Emergent Transportation agreements, each from a proposal answering the county’s 2025 Non-Emergent Transportation RFP dated May 7, 2025. Each runs July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2028. The vendors are ABCD, Inc.; A Blessed Path, Inc., doing business as ReliaRide; CMJW, Inc., doing business as Koala Kruizers; LED Inc., doing business as LED Transportation; and The Hupp Mobile Inc. The vote was two to zero, with one commissioner absent.

These are the same five companies the county used before. Purchase orders approved January 15, 2025 funded all five under contracts that began July 1, 2022 and ran to June 30, 2025, or to September 30, 2025 for ABCD. A Blessed Path’s earlier contract, approved June 29, 2022, was held under the name Scenic View Transportation until the commissioners approved the change to ReliaRide on February 26, 2025. ReliaRide is the same Canton company projected to earn $5,573,700 of the $11,000,000 that Summit County, next door, expects to spend on NET rides from October 2026 to September 2027.

What Stark County pays its NET vendors

The commissioners fund each agreement through purchase orders that set money aside for a vendor, approved as requisitions at their weekly meetings. These are the NET purchase orders approved from July 23, 2025 to August 5, 2026, after the new agreements began, next to the orders approved January 15, 2025 under the 2022 contracts:

Vendor	Set aside, July 2025 to August 2026	Set aside January 15, 2025
A Blessed Path, dba ReliaRide	$3,472,000	$800,000
The Hupp Mobile	$1,190,000	$500,000
LED Transportation	$1,105,000	$800,000
ABCD, Inc.	$600,000	$800,000
CMJW, dba Koala Kruizers	$585,000	$800,000

The July 2025 to August 2026 total is $6,952,000, and ReliaRide’s share is just under half. Its total includes a $420,000 order from October 8, 2025 that the commissioners raised by $100,000 on December 17, 2025, plus orders of $1,000,000 and $1,600,000 the same day. A purchase order is money reserved, not money paid, so treat these figures as the county’s expected spending.

The commissioners’ minutes show one rate. On August 27, 2025, the commissioners amended the Koala Kruizers agreement to raise its load fee per round trip from $65 to $130, effective back to July 1, 2025 and running to June 30, 2028. The other vendors’ rates are in their agreements. Under section 149.43 of the Revised Code, Stark County JFS must give you copies at cost within a reasonable time, and it may not make your name or your reason a condition. Ask for three things: the 2025 Non-Emergent Transportation RFP dated May 7, 2025, with its list of proposals received; the five agreements approved July 9, 2025, with their rates; and the county’s current form ODM 10241, the Medicaid County Transportation Profile that rule 5160-15-10 has every county file and update at least once a year.

How Stark’s county-run scheduling compares

The Auditor of State’s performance audit of Summit County’s NET program, certified June 26, 2025, used Stark as a peer. It found Stark has four employees dedicated to NET, in a Unit Support Worker 2 position that works only on the program, and that Stark does not contract out ride assignment. That leads to far higher call volume for county staff than in peer counties where a broker takes the scheduling calls. The position calls for a high school diploma or GED plus 12 months of experience.

For a vendor, the county is the dispatcher and the customer at once. The coordinators who book riders also assign the trips, and riders report late arrivals and late pickups to them directly. Summit, by contrast, pays METRO Regional Transit Authority to schedule its rides. Stark had 372,657 people and 114,035 Medicaid enrollees, 30.6% of the county, in the audit’s peer table, which uses 2020 to 2023 data.

When Stark County bids NET again

The current agreements end June 30, 2028. The last two contract cycles started July 1, 2022 and July 1, 2025, and the 2025 request for proposals was dated May 7, about eight weeks before its contracts began. If the county keeps that timing, the next one comes in spring 2028. The JFS request for proposals page listed no open bids on October 2, 2026.

To be ready:

1. Get the 2025 RFP and agreements now. Request them, with the ODM 10241 profile, so you know the vehicle, insurance, and rate terms before the next bid.
2. Watch two places. Stark County JFS posts open requests for proposals on its human services site, and the commissioners’ weekly agendas show every NET agreement, amendment, and purchase order.
3. Plan for curb-to-curb riders. County NET riders must be able to move into the vehicle on their own. Wheelchair van rides come through the health plans’ brokers, or from Ohio Medicaid directly for members outside a plan. CareSource Ohio members ride through Provide A Ride, and the Ohio guide lists the brokers for the other plans.
4. Ask a current vendor about overflow. Five vendors share the county’s trips, and one holds about half the money. Ask whether their agreements allow subcontractors, and read running trips as a subcontractor before you sign anything.
5. Keep driver files complete. Under rule 5160-15-14, each time the contract starts or renews and each time you hire a driver, the county needs a valid license, a certified driving record from the Ohio BMV, a criminal background check with no disqualifying offense, and a clear search of the federal exclusion lists. See NEMT driver background checks.