REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
Facility reservation system for parks and recreation
City of [CITY NAME], [STATE]
Solicitation number [NUMBER]. Issued [DATE]. Responses due [DATE] at [TIME].
1. Purpose
The City of [CITY NAME], [STATE] ("the City") is seeking proposals for a hosted facility reservation system for its parks and recreation facilities. The system will allow residents to view facility availability, reserve facilities online, pay rental fees and refundable deposits, and apply for event permits, and will allow City staff to administer those reservations, permits, and payments from a single back office.
Proposals are due by [DATE] at [TIME] [TIME ZONE]. Questions may be submitted to [CONTACT NAME], [TITLE], at [EMAIL] until [QUESTION DEADLINE].
2. Background
The City has a population of approximately [POPULATION] residents and operates [NUMBER] reservable facilities, including [LIST FACILITY TYPES, for example pavilions, ball fields, a community room, an amphitheater, and a gymnasium].
Reservations are currently handled by [DESCRIBE CURRENT PROCESS, for example telephone requests to City Hall, a paper form, and a shared calendar]. The City collects [DESCRIBE FEES, for example a rental fee and a refundable damage deposit] and processes approximately [NUMBER] reservations per year.
The parks and recreation function is staffed by [NUMBER] full-time and [NUMBER] part-time employees. The City does not maintain a dedicated information technology department and will not host, install, or maintain server infrastructure for this system.
3. Scope of work
The selected vendor shall provide, configure, and host a facility reservation system meeting the requirements in Section 4, and shall provide implementation, staff training, and ongoing support for the term of the agreement.
The system shall be delivered as a hosted service. The City will not procure hardware, install software on City workstations, or provide server administration.
4A. Requirements: resident reservations
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4A.1 | Residents shall be able to view all reservable facilities, including photographs, capacity, amenities, and current rates, without signing in. | Required |
| 4A.2 | Residents shall be able to complete a reservation without creating a user account, setting a password, or maintaining a profile. | Required |
| 4A.3 | The system shall display real availability for each facility by date and time, showing which hours are already reserved. | Required |
| 4A.4 | The system shall prevent double booking of the same facility for the same time period. | Required |
| 4A.5 | The system shall issue a unique confirmation number for every reservation and send an email confirmation to the resident. | Required |
| 4A.6 | Residents shall be able to look up an existing reservation using the confirmation number and the email address used to book. | Required |
| 4A.7 | Residents shall be able to cancel a reservation online, subject to a cancellation window configured by the City. | Required |
| 4A.8 | The resident-facing interface shall be fully usable on a mobile phone browser without a separate application download. | Required |
| 4A.9 | The system shall support differential resident and non-resident rates. | Desirable |
| 4A.10 | The system shall support recurring reservations, for example a weekly practice slot for a youth league. | Desirable |
4B. Requirements: payments and deposits
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4B.1 | The system shall accept payment by major credit and debit cards at the time of booking. | Required |
| 4B.2 | Funds from resident payments shall settle directly into a bank account held by the City. The vendor shall not hold, pool, or take custody of City funds at any point. | Required |
| 4B.3 | Cardholder data shall be handled by a PCI DSS compliant payment processor and shall not be stored on City systems. The vendor shall identify its payment processor in its proposal. | Required |
| 4B.4 | The system shall support a refundable deposit collected separately from, or in addition to, the rental fee. | Required |
| 4B.5 | Authorized staff shall be able to close out a completed reservation by refunding the deposit in full, or by withholding a stated amount with a recorded reason. | Required |
| 4B.6 | Every refund and withholding shall be recorded with the amount, the reason, the user who performed it, and the date and time, and shall be retrievable as a report. | Required |
| 4B.7 | The City shall be able to choose whether any vendor or convenience fee is absorbed by the City or added to the resident transaction, and any fee added to a resident transaction shall be disclosed to the resident before payment. | Required |
| 4B.8 | The system shall allow staff to record an offline payment, for example a check or cash paid at City Hall, against a reservation. | Desirable |
| 4B.9 | The system shall allow the City to waive fees for a specific reservation, for example for a nonprofit or a City-sponsored event, with the waiver recorded. | Desirable |
4C. Requirements: event permits
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4C.1 | Residents and organizations shall be able to submit an event permit application online. | Required |
| 4C.2 | The City shall be able to configure the questions on the permit application, including expected attendance, alcohol, amplified sound, vendors, and tents or inflatables. | Required |
| 4C.3 | Applicants shall be able to upload supporting documents, for example a certificate of insurance. | Desirable |
| 4C.4 | Staff shall review, approve, deny, or request changes to permit applications from a single queue, with the decision and the reviewer recorded. | Required |
| 4C.5 | Applicants shall be notified by email at each status change. | Required |
4D. Requirements: staff administration
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4D.1 | Staff shall access the system through a browser-based back office, with no software installed on City workstations. | Required |
| 4D.2 | The system shall support multiple staff users with distinct roles and permission levels, at minimum a general staff role and an administrator role able to issue refunds. | Required |
| 4D.3 | Staff accounts shall be scoped to the City. No user outside the City shall be able to view or modify City data other than vendor support personnel acting on a documented request. | Required |
| 4D.4 | Staff shall be able to create, modify, and cancel a reservation on behalf of a resident, for example one taken by telephone or at the counter. | Required |
| 4D.5 | Staff shall be able to add, edit, retire, and reorder facilities, including photographs, descriptions, capacity, rates, and reservable hours, without vendor assistance. | Required |
| 4D.6 | Staff shall be able to block out dates and times for maintenance, City events, weather closures, and holidays. | Required |
| 4D.7 | Staff shall be able to search reservations by resident name, email address, confirmation number, facility, and date range. | Required |
| 4D.8 | The system shall record an audit trail of administrative actions, including who acted, what changed, and when. | Required |
4E. Requirements: reporting
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4E.1 | The system shall report revenue by facility and by date range, distinguishing rental fees, deposits collected, deposits refunded, and deposits withheld. | Required |
| 4E.2 | The system shall report facility utilization by facility and by date range. | Required |
| 4E.3 | All reports shall be exportable in a standard format such as CSV or Excel. | Required |
| 4E.4 | The system shall provide a report suitable for reconciliation against the City bank deposit for a given period. | Desirable |
4F. Requirements: accessibility
The Department of Justice rule published in 2024 under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires web content and mobile applications provided by public entities to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The compliance date for public entities with a population under 50,000 is April 26, 2027.
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4F.1 | The resident-facing system shall conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. | Required |
| 4F.2 | The vendor shall provide a current Accessibility Conformance Report, based on the VPAT format, covering the production application rather than a planned release. The report shall state its date and the release it covers. | Required |
| 4F.3 | The vendor shall describe how accessibility is verified on an ongoing basis, and shall commit to remediating conformance defects reported by the City. | Required |
| 4F.4 | The staff-facing back office shall conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. | Desirable |
4G. Requirements: hosting, security, and data ownership
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4G.1 | All data entered by the City and by its residents shall remain the property of the City. | Required |
| 4G.2 | The vendor shall provide a complete export of City data in a standard machine-readable format on request, at no charge, both during the term and at termination. | Required |
| 4G.3 | The vendor shall not sell, license, or share City or resident data with any third party, and shall not use resident contact information for its own marketing. | Required |
| 4G.4 | All traffic shall be encrypted in transit using current TLS, and data shall be encrypted at rest. | Required |
| 4G.5 | The vendor shall describe its backup frequency, retention period, and recovery process. | Required |
| 4G.6 | The vendor shall notify the City without undue delay, and in any case within [NUMBER] days, of any breach affecting City or resident data. | Required |
| 4G.7 | The vendor shall state its hosting provider and the geographic region in which City data is stored. | Required |
| 4G.8 | The system shall be presented on a web address identifying the City, for example a subdomain assigned to the City or a domain the City controls. | Desirable |
4H. Requirements: implementation, training, and support
| Ref | Requirement | Level |
|---|---|---|
| 4H.1 | The vendor shall state the elapsed time from contract execution to the system being open to residents, and shall list everything required from the City to meet it. | Required |
| 4H.2 | The vendor shall perform initial configuration, including loading the City facility list, rates, photographs, and staff accounts. | Required |
| 4H.3 | The vendor shall provide staff training, and shall state the format and duration. | Required |
| 4H.4 | The vendor shall provide written documentation for staff. | Required |
| 4H.5 | The vendor shall state its support hours, its support channels, and its target response time for an issue that prevents residents from booking. | Required |
| 4H.6 | The vendor shall state whether product updates are included at no additional charge. | Required |
| 4H.7 | The vendor shall describe its process for assisting the City with migration to another system at termination. | Desirable |
5. Pricing
Vendors shall state all costs for the first year and for each renewal year, including any of the following that apply: annual license or subscription, one-time implementation or setup fee, training fee, per-user or per-seat charges, per-transaction or percentage-of-revenue fees, payment processing fees, charges for additional facilities or modules, and any charge for data export.
Vendors shall identify any cost that is not included in the quoted price. Vendors shall state the minimum contract term and any automatic renewal or price escalation provisions.
The City intends to award an agreement with an initial term of one year. Proposals requiring a multi-year commitment shall state that requirement clearly.
6. Proposal contents
- A cover letter identifying the firm, its principal place of business, and a single point of contact.
- A response to each requirement in Section 4, stating whether the requirement is met as delivered, met through configuration, met through custom work, or not met.
- The pricing information described in Section 5.
- A current Accessibility Conformance Report as described in requirement 4F.2.
- A live demonstration environment the City may use without scheduling a call, or an offer of a scheduled demonstration.
- Three references from municipal clients of comparable size, including the client name, contact, and the year of implementation.
- A description of the vendor firm, its years in operation, and the number of municipal clients it currently serves.
- A sample of the vendor standard agreement.
7. Evaluation
Proposals will be evaluated on the following criteria. The City reserves the right to reject any or all proposals, to request clarification, and to award on the basis of best value rather than lowest price.
- Functional fit against the requirements in Section 4: 30 points
- Resident experience, including ease of booking without an account: 20 points
- Total cost over three years, including all fees: 20 points
- Accessibility conformance and the quality of the conformance report: 15 points
- Implementation timeline, training, and support: 10 points
- References from comparable municipalities: 5 points
8. Questions and submission
Questions shall be submitted in writing to [CONTACT NAME], [TITLE], [EMAIL], by [DATE]. Responses to questions will be issued to all known proposers. Proposals shall be submitted to [SUBMISSION ADDRESS OR EMAIL] by the deadline stated above. Late proposals will not be considered.