Public Safety Committee approves Prop S 2026 RFP timeline and names Mental Health Board as external reviewer

The St. Louis City Public Safety Committee approved a timeline and external-review process for the Office of Violence Prevention’s (OVP) Prop S 2026 request for proposals (RFP).

Brett Bridal, public information officer for OVP, told the committee there is about $890,000 available for this grant cycle and reviewed the RFP structure: organizational history and capacity, equity-centered practice, proposed programming (priority given to 12 high-need neighborhoods), data collection plans, and budget/fiscal management with a required 12-month timeline. He said awards are listed in the RFP as "up to thousand dollars per organization"; the per-organization cap is not specified in the meeting transcript.

Bridal described a technology change: OVP will use an online form (Jotform) this year to require all fields, reduce missing attachments, enable conditional logic, integrate submissions with Box and Google sheets for external reviewers, and provide automated receipt confirmations to applicants. He outlined weighted scoring (record 20%; equity 20%; programming 40%; data 10%; budget 10%) and said reviewers sign conflict-of-interest releases.

Committee members asked about outreach and transparency; Bridal said OVP uses website postings, social media, and email blasts to previous applicants and partners and reported receiving over 40 applications last year. A committee member requested that anonymized scores and the rubric be made public; Bridal said OVP can explore providing anonymized score rankings and the rubric while protecting proprietary applicant material.

On a voice vote, the committee confirmed the Mental Health Board as the external reviewer. The committee then set the RFP schedule: open Monday, October 6, 2025; deadline for organizations to submit questions October 17, 2025; Q&As posted October 24, 2025; proposals due November 6, 2025. The committee tentatively scheduled internal review meetings for November 13 and November 20 and estimated contract starts of February 1, 2026, noting that ENA approval and the full board’s actions could affect final award dates.

OVP and committee members discussed the need to provide committee members and the public with documentation in advance and to allow time for committee questions to vendors after external review. The committee voted to approve the RFP pending edits to update the timeline and identify the external reviewer in the posted document. No written testimony or public commenters were recorded on the topic during this meeting.

The transcript does not specify the per-organization award cap (the RFP text describes a cap but the dollar figure was not captured in the meeting record).