Columbus Zoo asked a judge to void a township ticket charge, then settled for a reported $725,000

A year ago the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium went to court to establish that Liberty Township could not charge its guests up to a dollar a head for fire and EMS coverage. It lost that question in front of a judge, won it later at the statehouse, and is paying the township anyway.

The zoo announced the case in a press release dated Aug. 6, 2025. The release says the zoo filed in Delaware County Common Pleas Court, with a motion for preliminary injunction meant to delay what it describes as the township's attempt to collect a new tax on the zoo's admissions and memberships. Two of the things the zoo asked a judge to do appear in the copy: clarify that the statute does not apply to a not-for-profit zoological organization, and rule that the township had no legal power to impose or collect the charge. "This is an important legal issue and a matter of standing up for our guests, our mission, and our work in education, conservation, and animal care," said Tom Schmid, president and CEO of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

By its own account, the zoo was contesting a statute written for somebody else. House Bill 315, the release states, passed in April 2024 and allows townships to tax up to $1 per admission ticket in certain limited circumstances to help offset public safety costs, and was initially intended for large concert venues. The zoo put its 2024 attendance at 1.8 million, said its own EMS and safety teams manage most guest medical and safety incidents, and described the township's support for hospital transports as under 3 percent of what the township does for the community. The release also credits zoo guests with roughly 15 percent of the township's total economic activity in 2024, and takes care to note that the zoo trains jointly with the Liberty Township Fire Department.

The township answered the next day, and its answer begins with a noun. The trustees' release gives the correction a line of its own: "The "Protect and Serve Charge" is not a tax." What the release describes instead is a service fee that the venue collects and remits to the township to offset the cost of police, fire and emergency medical readiness at high-capacity venues. The charge was approved unanimously by the trustees, the release states, and is authorized under H.B. 315, which it reads as granting townships the power to impose a per-admission fee of up to $1 on qualifying large, tax-exempt venues. The zoo clears that threshold, the township argues, at more than 540 acres and more than 2,000 visitors a day, and it hosts concerts and events besides - the Lantern Festival, Boo at the Zoo, Wildlights. "We are confident that the Township is acting well within the authority granted by Ohio law," said Shyra Eichhorn, chair of the Liberty Township Board of Trustees. The release lists no party affiliation for her or for the two other trustees.

The same document reads the zoo's finances aloud. Citing the zoo's publicly available 2023 IRS Form 990, the township lists over $63 million in cash and investments, $14.2 million in profits contributed to its operations, $381,385 in legal fees and $100,500 in lobbying services. Those are the township's characterizations of a filing this desk did not review. The release adds that the township had requested daily and annual attendance and membership numbers and had not received them.

The first checkable test of the zoo's legal claim came in January. WOSU Public Media's report, dated 2026-01-28 in its URL, is headlined that the judge ruled the township can impose the fee; the copy available to this desk carries the court's reasoning but neither the date nor the disposition in its body, so the outcome is treated here as headline evidence and nothing more. What the body does carry is the definition the ruling turned on: "a permanent facility on land which is tax exempt, but has a capacity of at least 2,000 attendees" that is both a zoo and a venue used for concerts, weddings, meetings and other events is, in the court's reading, a qualifying event venue. A statement quoted in that report - the excerpt names no speaker - reads: "We're grateful the court ruled so clearly: the Columbus Zoo must pay the Protect and Serve Fee to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars in Fire and EMS services it uses, rather than passing those costs to Liberty Township and Powell taxpayers."

The legislature then moved. WOSU's June 25, 2026 headline states that the zoo agreed to pay the township for EMS as township ticket taxes are banned. The headline is the evidence, and it is treated here as no more than that: the body text available to this desk contains no bill number, and Ohio's statute and legislature sites could not be reached, so no repealing measure is named. A speaker in that report, whom the excerpt does not identify, said: "We don't wanna be a burden on the township."

Trustees approved a settlement ending the dispute, Richland Source reported on Aug. 11, 2026; the report does not give the approval date itself. "We are pleased to have reached a mutually agreeable resolution that brings this matter to a close," reads a statement in that report, which likewise names no speaker. ABC6 WSYX puts the value at $725,000 for fire and EMS until 2030 in its headline; comment quoted by ABC6, again unattributed in the excerpt available here, calls it a win for Liberty Township taxpayers and says the deal "covers our legal expenses, and provides a five-year revenue stream".

Set the numbers next to each other and the settlement matches nobody's opening position - the arithmetic below is this desk's, drawn from figures both parties put on the record. Spread evenly, $725,000 over five years is about $145,000 a year. Levied at the statutory ceiling of $1 against the 1.8 million admissions the zoo reported for 2024, the charge would have raised roughly $1.8 million a year on those assumptions, more than twelve times the settlement's annual average. The township's own January statement, meanwhile, described the fire and EMS services the zoo uses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The parties do not even agree on the denominator: 1.8 million visitors in the zoo's telling, more than 2 million in the township's, with the township saying it asked for the figures and got none.

What ended, in the end, was an argument about a word. The zoo called the charge a tax on a nonprofit; the township said in a standalone sentence that it is not one; the ruling as WOSU describes it read the zoo as a qualifying venue; the legislature then took the power away. The money moved regardless - by contract instead of by ticket.

The checkable items from here carry dates. ABC6 describes a five-year revenue stream running until 2030, so Liberty Township's financial records for 2027 should show a payment from the zoo if the reported schedule holds, and should show none if it does not. The agreement itself sits in the township's hands as a public record, and the trustees who approved it meet in public.