The city of Ann Arbor has canceled its Request for Proposal, or RFP, for an unarmed response program. This was to be the first policing alternative of its kind in the state of Michigan and despite overwhelming support, city staff decided to cancel the RFP in a closed meeting on December 18.
According to the city’s website, this was a staff-level decision, which does not require a vote from City Council. The city claims that it intends on re-opening the RFP at some point this year and acknowledges the Council’s support of an unarmed response program.
The RFP had only one applicant, an Ann Arbor non-profit called Care-Based Safety, or CBS. CBS, which grew out of the Coalition for Re-envisioning Our Safety, or CROS — an organization which focuses on community organizing and engagement — submitted a lengthy report for their proposal, one which may not have been given the focus it needed.
“CBS submitted a proposal over 70 pages in length, which met all the requirements of the RFP and was overwhelmingly supported by the city,” Ann Arbor Resident and member of CROS Alex Parks tells Metro Times. “We know that Council had not seen the proposal before the meeting [on December 18].”
The proposal has been made public since the RFP was canceled and CBS is looking for feedback from residents.
The unarmed response program was not a novel idea for Ann Arbor. Back in 2021, elected officials began looking into what an unarmed response program might look like. Residents were also in favor of the idea, asking the city to dedicate American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, funds to such a program. Of the $24.1 million allocated to Ann Arbor, $3.5 million of the ARPA funds were secured for the unarmed response program.
The city spent over $100,000 on public engagements to determine if residents would be in favor of an unarmed response program, even hiring a Lansing-based consultant company to help determine what the RFP recommendations would look like.
“During the community engagement, CROS came up with specific demands of what would be important in an unarmed response program,” Parks says. “Some of those were that the program can be reached by a number that’s not 911, that it’s housed outside the government and separate from the police, and, namely, that it goes through a public RFP process so that there was room for community engagement.”
CROS wrote a report on their findings from these public engagements, which was later used by City Administrator Milton Dohoney, Jr. in his own report presented to City Council. Both reports found that there was “broad conceptual support from the community for a [unarmed response] program.”
Last summer, Ann Arbor’s City Council voted unanimously in support of the RFP, with nearly all members asking to be co-sponsors. The RFP opened up in August and interviews with applicants over their proposals were to begin in October.
So where did things go wrong?
In a recent post on social media, CBS addressed some of the concerns city officials had with the proposal. However, the city has still not released the minutes from their closed session on December 18.
“Getting an unarmed response program in Washtenaw County is important because the people need it, have been asking for it for years, and now we have the money for it,” Parks says. “But it’s also important because it’s the first program of its kind in Michigan. In a lot of ways Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County can be leaders in getting these programs off the ground. Other cities are looking toward us and seeing what is possible."
The next City Council meeting is at 7 p.m. on January 11 and CROS and CBS activists are asking residents to get involved.
“Above all, we just want the city and staff to change their minds and undo the cancellation,” Parks explains. “We want the minutes released from the closed session as well. We also want them to open up communications with their only applicant and start the negotiations and process that they were supposed to do with the interviews.”
What is also concerning is the timing of everything. Although the city claims to be re-opening the RFP this year, the schedule for the program barely fits other constraints. What’s more is that this occurred right before the holidays.
“These ARPA funds are time bound and they have to be spent by the end of 2026, and this is a two-year program being proposed,” Parks points out. “It’s the residents’ money and years ago we decided how to spend it and we prioritized unarmed response. I think it’s of note that all of this is happening over the holidays. Ann Arbor is a college town and when things happen over break or over the summer, it’s harder to mobilize support when students are away — especially when they are a group that could benefit a lot from this program.”
When asked how people can get involved, Parks notes: “We have email templates people can send to City Council and the City Administrator. They can call in or show up to the City Council meeting on the [11th].”
More information is available in a full timeline of the events and feedback can be provided in a Google Form. More information on CROS can be found at their Linktree.
Update: The public meeting date was moved to Jan. 11.
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