Welcome to Off the CUPF, a community use of public facilities podcast, the show where we explore, discuss, and introduce you, our listeners, to the wonderful world of community youth. I'm Emily Brewster-McCarthy.
Derek RossAnd I am Derek Ross. Together, we are your host, and we are here to provide you with some of the most up-to-date news and information about CUPF. Emily, are you ready to get started? Absolutely, I'm ready to get started. You stop by Mambo? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm ready to mambo. Here we go. Here we go. I think we mamboing. I think we mambo. Are we mamboing, Emily? We are. We are.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyWe're always Mamboing.
Derek RossWell, we are. We do. Is it left foot, right foot? How does that work?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyNo, whatever foot comes first.
Whatever foot comes first. Hello, everybody. Hello, everybody. We've just getting this Mambo taken care of. Once again, welcome back to Off the CUPF Community Use of Public Facilities podcast. Welcome, welcome back. I think this is what season two, episode seven. And we call this stepping back outside, the warm weather reset edition. That's right. It's that time. We're getting ready. We're getting ready. Hello, Emily. How are you? You know, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I guess we, you know what? Let's let I'm stop right there. Let's get into the highs and lows. How are you feeling?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYou know, okay. So let me give you my high. First of all, I'm feeling great. Oh. As always. Okay.
Derek RossOkay.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyUh birthday's coming up soon. So no, no. Uh no, so my high um is recently, maybe about a month ago or so, right? Uh the kids had their hundredth day of school. So that was, you know, pretty cool. Okay. Uh we had a lot of littles, you know, dressed up uh with little walkers and with, you know, some wigs on that have white hair. It was super cute. Um, there's some very interesting projects that they did at school. Um my my daughter uh drew like the how what would you or where are you gonna be in a hundred years? And so she's six and she definitely uh did something a little morbid because she was like, I'm not gonna be here anymore. Oh my god. But it was really cute and funny and uh yeah. Um but yeah, so my low, um you know, so now that the snow is melting and the wet weather's getting better, okay, right? You know what has been appearing?
Derek RossWhat has been appearing?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyDog waste literally everywhere, and I'm so sick of it. I just want all of our neighbors to be good neighbors and pick up after their dogs. So, community, please. That's it. Pick up after your dog. That's it. That's all that's all. That's all. We love that. We love a clean shoe in the morning. Just a little bit.
Derek RossYeah, just a little just a little bit. Just a little bit. But that is so that's a low. Yeah, that's a low. That's a low. Oh my goodness. How about you? Uh, I don't know if I could top that low, but uh here we go. So, you know what? I I think I'll start off with a uh you know what? The snow is leaving. It is. I don't know if I'm should knock on wood or we shouldn't. I don't know. Is that the term we can use? Because I don't is it snow over with? I don't know.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyAt this point, there was not much wood, but there was snow creep.
Derek RossThere was snow, so knock on snow.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYes, knock a knock on ice.
Derek RossSo, yes, so the snow is finally leaving. So that's a that's a good high for me. I'm feeling good about that. We're starting to talk about going outside. We're talking about that. Weather's getting a little bit warmer right now, and we're we're we're back outside. I I hope. I hope. But my low, my low is um, you know what, Emily, there's a lot of events in the county. A lot of events. There's a lot of activities, there's festivals, there's farmers markets. It is information overload. So I think I am going to spend some time on the calendar with us as well, too, figuring out activities that we should be doing, outreach activities. Now is the time to be outside or plan to go outside. So that that that's a low. You know, is it's a lot, it's a lot of activities and kudos to the county for all of these amazing activities and events. That is a low. So you know what? Highs and lows, we're we're good to go. Emily, do you want to give the listeners? You want to give the listeners a little bit of a taste and encourage them to listen to our podcast?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyUh yeah. So please, uh, well, if you're not already listening, which I'm assuming you are if you're hearing our voices right now.
Derek RossOf course.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyUh yeah, please subscribe and come check us out. Uh, I know we say like we're cool, we're cool. No, but we really are. And I think, you know, just smash that subscribe button. Like, I like it. Listen to us.
You know, I like it when you do that. I like absolutely it it sounds so like legit when you do it that way. I feel very comfortable when you bring up when you All right, all right, we're gonna keep it moving, we're gonna keep it moving. We're gonna go what jump into our Did You Know?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYep.
Derek RossAll right, let's do our Did You Know, did you know? To our community, you know, just in case, did you know? Or do you know about activemontgomery.org. Yes, activemontgomery.org. So if you didn't know or would like to know more about active Montgomery or what is Active Montgomery, it is, and I'll start off, it is just a registration, a facility reservation system, which is our platform that you can use to what register for what classes?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYeah, camps, workerships. Uh they have lessons offered by Parks and Rec. Um, there's a couple other things too. I mean, there's like a whole bunch of public facilities uh you can pay online, um, all through Active Montgomery. And they take uh, I believe all credit cards, right? Major credit cards, and it's just such a uh actually, I think you have one more, a couple more, right?
Derek RossTo add to that. Yeah, with credit cards. And then we have what? Well, I think that's a good one too, since we, you know, we we do comms and all that stuff. It's good to know that some you know, websites and stuff can be on the PC, or you know, they could be on the PC tablet or other mobile devices with internet access. And then also, too, you know, with Active Montgomery, after creating an account, you can log into Active Montgomery with your email and password. One login allows you to use your account for your family, organization, and as an instructor. So there's there's options. There's options. Family, what other questions that people may ask? So just in case you need to know in this FAQ.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYeah, so in our FAQ, uh, we can answer, like, let's say a question of how do I create an account on Active Montgomery? Important. Um, what should I do if I forget my password? How do I reset my account, right? How do I reserve a facility? So just go and check out our FAQs and we'll be able to answer all of those things in one-stop shop. One stop shop. Yeah.
Derek RossI like that one stop shop. See, I feel good to hear that. I feel good to hear that because it is a one-stop shop. And just in case you didn't know, we're going to keep throwing it in because you know what? We've had family friends be like, y'all need to make sure y'all encourage y'all listeners to check out the podcast.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyLet's keep it going.
Let's keep it going. You just want to make sure that you know this is off the CUPF community user public facilities podcast. Try to say that all fast and quick to make sure trying to sound cool, trying to sound cool, but make sure you check us out. Hit that subscribe button and like, and you know, follow us. We're we're here. We're here. But Emily, we're talking about being outside, though. Yeah. We are, we are. So I guess when we're talking about outside, we're talking about seasonal, you know, spring, the summer, all of that stuff. So, Emily, what what what outside facilities? We've talked about it before, but you know, just in case nobody didn't know, what what can we talk about with facilities outside?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyWell, okay, there's a couple things, right? We have a lot of outdoor facilities. I'm gonna name them off right now. So we have Marion Friartown Plaza, uh, Wheaton Veterans Park, which is uh a couple blocks from the plaza, uh, the civil civic building, Veterans Plaza, the civic building. So we're speaking Civic Building and Veterans Plaza uh being two uh separate things in one kind of space, uh, all through CUPF. Um we have outdoor basketball courts, tennis courts, parking lots. We have a whole bunch of outdoor facilities that you can um permit through us. So start thinking about things that you want to do. Uh, you know, like we said, weather's getting better. Um, we're gonna have a lot of activities planned at uh Marion Friar Town Plaza. There's gonna be festivals as well as um Veterans Plaza in Silver Spring. There's lots of festivals, farmers markets. Uh, I mean, you think you think about you know something cool happening, it's probably gonna happen there. And, you know, keep an eye out on our website, keep an eye out. Uh, we have a little bit later in the episode, we'll talk about how you can keep up to date with like uh potential um notifications uh for events and stuff that are upcoming uh for CUPF and at these outdoor venues. And again, just keep in mind like what do you what do you want to do? Do you wanna, I don't know, do you have a farmer's market table? Do you have uh uh are you a vendor at a flea market? Are you thinking about doing something like that? Do you want to be a part of like let's say taste of wheat and something like that? So just keep thinking about things that you want to do. And although there are some um potentially, like if you're a vendor, you might have to get um a permit uh as a vendor, but those are all resources that we can um help you guys uh, you know, or we can lead you guys to if you need them.
Yeah, oh yeah. Emily, you you just rocked that. I'm just letting you know that. You you did that. You just you did that. And so since we're talking about outside and we're talking about facilities and all of these spaces and stuff like that, I also wanted to bring up, you know what? What with some of the little things that I enjoy doing, or some of the stuff that we would like to do, and that's like, you know, adopt the road, adopt the highway, some street cleaning initiatives in the county. I like to be outside, y'all. I like to go outside, I like to have activities, I like to participate. Uh I was one of those kids. I was in what Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts. I was outdoors volunteering, picking up trash and doing various things, getting, what is it, community service? You remember community service hours? I do. You do? I do. We got we got to get more community service hours. But yes, out being outside means not only do we get to participate in some of the activities, but we also get the lead and some initiatives for the county as well. So I am glad that as the weather gets warmer, we can plan to, you know, maybe go to our adopter road and clean up, you know, clean up a little bit. Just do our little part. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. So that is the joy of being outside. Not only being able to participate in some of these facilities, outdoor facilities and activities with CUPF, but you also get to see us do some things in the community, actually don't adopt the roads and adopt the highway. So just throwing that out there. Also, too, if you're interested, you know, we'll put that in there so you can know if you wanted to adopt a road or a highway to let your business or let people know that, you know, you're giving to the community. You just throwing that out there, just my little two cent there. This is a little two cent. But Emily, you know, we we we we gotta bring up another go live date, don't we?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYeah, we do. We have uh we have a upcoming go live date, another 2026 opening day reservation coming up. Um, you can actually uh go to our blogger. Uh the article name is Community Use Bridge. Big news. Big news. We've made some exciting updates to our 2026 opening day go live reservation dates. Um but here's the thing. So the next upcoming date, uh, we just had one um which was February 9th, and that was for uh outdoor fields and auditoriums and parking lots. And we had a bunch of people uh start reserving and stuff and planning for uh the spring and summer already. So um jump on that if you haven't already. Uh there's still some space available, so go ahead and and look to see if you have any space available within or that's close to you um where you live, the city that you live. Uh but the next date is April 13th, 2026, 2026. Uh, it is the second Monday in April. Uh it's gonna be the opening day to reserve library meeting rooms for dates use July 1st through December 31st. So again, it's going to be April 13th, 2026, the second Monday in April, opening day to reserve library meeting rooms for dates of use July 1st through December 31st. Yes. So hop on that. Um, you know, start planning your meetings, start planning if you have HOA meetings, uh, whatever you need, like uh community meetings, whatever you have going on, um, you know, see if you if you have use of those rooms. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
What? You know what? That that that that that that makes feel good because there's always a space. There's a space someplace. And if you need a space, just reach out to community use the public facilities. We got you. We got you. Just reach out to us, you know, check in, or just let just if you have some ideas. But you know, Emily, since we're talking about library meeting rooms, I think this is taking us straight into our next segment about how we're trying to remind people about our little networking and collaboration we're doing with Montgomery County Public Libraries, MCPL. And if you haven't been listening to our past couple episodes, Emily has given us so much information about her birthday. So, Emily, you like we got to do it again. We're getting close to it's getting close to MoComCon. It's right around the corner. So, so so tell the community why it's such an important day.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyWhy is it such a side from it being my birthday, okay? Like I said, uh, so March 20th uh is super important and it's gonna be fun and a celebration uh with MCPL. Um, and it's gonna be MoComCon 2026. And uh again, it's 10 years of MoComCon. Uh March 20th starts. It's free for everybody. Um, it's gonna be at Germantown Library uh as well as Black Rock Center for the Arts. Go ahead and check their website to see um, you know, any details on uh time starting, things like that. Um check back often for updates. I know they're updating um like guest lists, they're updating uh activities and stuff that are gonna be held. Um there's a lot of cool things that are happening there. We have a lot of uh some friends from the from MCPL are running the programs uh there. So we're very excited to join them. Um excited to take my daughter. Uh again, I'm just so excited to celebrate my birthday with probably the coolest cats in town. I'm just gonna say, like, I'm just I'm just so excited uh that I get to spend my birthday there. Yeah, do something awesome.
Derek RossYeah. Well, I mean, you know what? If you're gonna be there, I'm gonna be there. You know, let's just do it. We're all celebrating. We're all gonna be there. Let's let's just go. Let's just go. MoComCon. We're gonna be there. We're gonna be there. We're gonna enjoy the stuff like that. But once again, you know, we're just bringing it up, we're just tying the dots, you know, click connecting the dots. You know, we just talked about opening day reservation, April 13th. And ironically, here we are talking about MoComCon. And it's the opening day reservation at the libraries. MoComCon is taking place at the what? The libraries. What? And also, too. Can I do my did you know? Can we do that quick did you know about the libraries?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYeah, I think that's important too.
Derek RossWhat, what, what? You know, you know, we can't go a podcast without using our voice. We got to do our voice. All right, let's go, let's go. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. Okay, okay, I'm gonna throw it. I'm gonna throw it in first. All right. Did you know? I had to start off like that just to see it. Did you know Montgomery County Public Libraries is turning 75 and we're celebrating all year long from a new commemorative library card to special events and programs at branches across the county. This anniversary celebration is all about the community we've built together. Join us for the next chapter with every voice, live with every voice, every story. Visit MCPL Eventslash 75 to learn more. So I I think it's very important that we throw that out there just to let people know. Remind people about the card.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyI'm so excited. And I know I keep bringing up that uh commemorative library card, but listen, I'm in there.
Are you in? I'm in there. Okay, okay. I mean, like we gotta take a picture of it. If we don't take a picture of that car, selfie with the cup. If we don't do that, that we we we didn't do right by the community. We gotta let the people know that we got our car. So we gotta let other people know. Yeah. So as we continue on through this podcast and we're we're kind of summing it up a little bit, and we once again want to say uh we appreciate you listening to the podcast. We appreciate you listening to the podcast. Thank you so much, thank you so much. Once again, this is Off the CUPF Community Use of Public Facilities podcast, episode seven, stepping back outside, the warm weather reset edition. But Emily, we we we cannot end this episode without making sure we tell people about more health resources. Just remind people. Can we remind people about health resources?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYeah, for sure. I think one of the things that um we we want to keep saying, right, is um make sure that you you can call us, you can email us. Yeah. Uh you can you can hit us up directly. I mean CUPF at Montgomery County Md.gov. That is our email. You can, you know, email us with any questions or concerns you have um about permits or anything like that. Um we also have a phone number that you can call 240-777-2725. And that is our main line. Um, we also have an after hours uh helpline. Um, and that's um gonna be 240-490-CUPF. Um, and that's gonna be you can call or text Monday through Friday outside of business hours. Um, so it's gonna be um before 8 30 a.m. and after 5 p.m. is when after hours line uh is available.
Derek RossYeah. Oh yeah. That is good information to know. That is good information to know. We have tons of groups. Everybody's out and about in the community doing their thing, everybody's having a good time, but we also gotta make sure we double up and give you more resources. Yes, more. Did you say more? We got more for you.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYeah, there's another, there's another uh way to kind of get in touch with us, right? Is it?
Derek RossYes, it is. CUPF notifications, including emergency closings. There are a lot of alert notifications that are very helpful to not just only groups and individuals that are, you know, reserving spaces with CUPF, but just in general, if you need some more information that is happening in the county, I would we strongly encourage you to also just, you know, check out the Gov Delivery notifications. We want you to make sure that you're checking the boxes, to kind of keep track of all of the organizations, the departments, and the offices, because a lot of us are posting information alerts, and we want to make sure everybody gets the information ahead of time, especially when there's weather emergencies and there's closings and stuff like that. But once again, these are helpful resources. We got to put them up. We got to make sure they're available. Uh, we want people to make sure that they're checking in. I mean, you you you're listening to our podcast. I mean, we appreciate that, but we want to make sure that you understand that there's other resources that are available, not just the podcast. You haven't, you know, we have other stuff that is going on with communities, the public facilities. So continue to check us out, continue to listen and everything like that. Emily, are we closing this episode?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyYeah, we can close it out. I think we're good. This was uh, you know, I'm excited uh that the weather's getting better.
Derek RossIt is.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyUm, excited for MoComCon. Um, I'm excited to, you know, clean up with uh Adopt a Highway, uh Adopt a sorry, adopt a road, medical.
Derek RossAdopt a highway, yeah, yep, yep. Everything.
Emily Brewster-McCarthyEverything adopt everything. Actually, speaking of which, hopefully soon we'll be talking about adopting other things, like maybe some, you know, kittens and puppies. And uh you know, I won't I won't talk too much about that, but I'm excited for for um being able to talk about that in a future episode.
Derek RossOh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm I'm thinking about that. Our last visit. Anyway, our last visit. Yeah, being around animals. Yes, we love it. We love it. Yes, yes, yes. We are definitely closing out this podcast. And you know what? This has been a good podcast. We're just trying to make sure we get the information out. We want to make sure that our listeners are listening. You know, we want to make sure that you're checking us out and seeing what's going on with community use of public facilities. There's a lot of stuff happening. Emily, you got any last things you want to say or anything?
Emily Brewster-McCarthyUh, I just want to give a quick shout out to all of our staff. Um, we're outstanding. Yeah, we got to spend uh some time uh a little more time than normal at the office uh lately, and we got some cool people at our staff. We do. Uh yeah, I'm just so happy we get to spend time with them and you know, break bread and just shout out to all CUPF staff. You guys are awesome. Yeah, shout out. Thank y'all, thank y'all so much. And subscribe to our podcast.
Derek RossSubscribe, subscribe, of course. Subscribe, subscribe, because we're because what? We're cool. You know, we're gonna keep throwing it out there like this. We're cool guys. Yeah, you know what? Don't worry about that. But once again, thank you for listening to Off the CUPF Community Use of Public Facilities podcast. We'll see you next time.
Emily Brewster-McCarthySee y'all later.
Derek RossBye.
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