Off the CUPF: Community Use of Public Facilities

Resources, Updates, and Reminders | Keeping the Community Engaged and Aware of CUPF Events

• Derek Ross and Ramona Bell-Pearson • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Are you interested in reserving a facility through CUPF? Have you heard of ActiveMONTOGOMERY.org? In this podcast, CUPF Director, Ramona Bell-Pearson and Communications and Outreach Specialist, Derek Ross, will have a roundtable discussion with CUPF's New Summer Fellow, Sarah Hoffman, highlighting the resources that are being made available to the community. Listen as we discuss the importance of making sure our community is aware of our events and where they can go for more information. 

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Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Welcome to Off the CUPF a community use of public facilities podcast. We are one of many county government podcasts that focus on sustainability and innovation, all while making sure our community is aware of the services the county provides. Are you looking to reserve an outdoor indoor facility at a library, school or county building? How about the Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza or the Clarksburg Cottage in Montgomery County, maryland? Available venues are here to be reserved and we are the office that can make it happen. We are CUPF and thank you for joining our community podcast. Let's get started.

Derek Ross:

Here we go, here we go. We got a beautiful intro Once again. Voice recording voice overs by our director, ramona Bell Pearson. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to Communities of Public Facilities. Off the CUPF. Once again, I'm Derek Ross, a communications outreach specialist with CUPF. Hi, Ramona.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Hi Derek, how are you doing?

Derek Ross:

I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. But before we get into the highs and lows, you know I definitely got to check in Once again. This is a brand new podcast, but we do have our summer fellow back again with us. I'm just going to throw that out there again. Sarah is back again, but we'll save Sarah in a few minutes to come in. But we just had to let people know, just in case people are checking in Like when is Sarah going to start?

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

talking Sarah's here.

Derek Ross:

Sarah's here. So, Ramona, let's do a quick check in Highs and lows.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Oh, wow, geez. I guess the highs would be that it's finally summer. Oh, the lows. Lows would be well, I should say it'll be summer on friday maybe, but the the lows would be. The spring has been pretty chilly and rainy and gloomy, but I will say, this past weekend it did not rain on my parade okay, okay, I got you, I got you, I got you.

Derek Ross:

I feel we're going with that. I like that, is that it? I'm trying to be serious. Everybody Is that it. We good, we good with that. So yes, yes, yes, yes. Highs and lows, highs and lows. It's kind of crazy when I ask you and I'm thinking to myself I just asked you highs and lows, and I'm like all right, I and lows.

Derek Ross:

I guess from a work-related you know, we are probably working on something that I think is going to change the game for CUPF, and that is this whole we mentioned it before this whole demographics thing, where we're talking about learning about the community. I know there's different departments, agencies and organizations that work on it, but it's going to be unique for us because it's really going to be able to help us know where we're going to. I wouldn't say invest, but put our time and energy in regards to knowing where all of our information is being circulated, If we need to know what's going on in up county, over here in Bethesda, over here in another side of the county. There's so many different parts of the county that we're learning about and I think that that's the great part about it. So that's the great part about it. So that's a high for me. I'm enjoying that low.

Derek Ross:

Just joking with everybody. I do have a four-year-old son. Um, I had a dream in this dream. This dream, I felt like I got smacked. So when I woke up, my son was standing over me. Now, I didn't know for sure, but I immediately scrunched my face because I felt like he did something, but he didn't say anything.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

So I couldn't tell, but his hand was up in the air.

Derek Ross:

It was the energy in the room made it seem like he did something and I couldn't tell. So that's my joke for it. And I was like I couldn't tell, so that was my law. I was like, looking at him, like wait a minute now. I don't know if I need to do Anyway.

Sarah Hoffman:

He was just yeah, I guess so, but he was standing over me and the dream I got woken up violently. Now I can read for pleasure and you know it's not painful anymore. So I've been burning through books pretty quickly. So that's a high for me and I don't think I have any any new lows to report other than the same one I had the last podcast of. Just I looked at the weather for next week and I saw some hundred plus days in our forecast, which does not make me happy.

Derek Ross:

Oh, those a hundred days, they're coming, they're coming, yes, yes, yes. Well, that is our highs and lows. We've checking in with individuals and everybody just to see how everybody's doing. You know just a little, something, something. So let's get into it. Let's get into it. Ramona, you know we do ask our listeners a question and that question is this go round is are you familiar? Familiar with ActiveMontgomeryorg? Yes and no, you could just bring it out there. You could just be honest with us. So you know, if you aren't familiar with Active Montgomery, that is pretty much our platform where you can kind of go to just reserve facilities. We're also shared with parks and rec. It's a lot to deal with when in regards to Active Montgomery but I'll throw that over to our director, ramona ActiveMontgomeryorg, how important it is to CUPF.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Active Montgomery is very important to CUPF, it's very important to our community because it's their opportunity to exercise their right to have access to government facilities, mcps facilities, outdoor facilities, and it's not just the CUPF facilities that are managed, it's also, as you said, montgomery Parks and Department of Recreation.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

So with recreation and parks, it not only includes facilities but it includes access to programs. Not only includes facilities but it includes access to programs, because while CUF only does permitting for facilities, montgomery Parks, as well as recreation, does programming in addition to having facilities that are available. So it's a very important platform for the government. It was important to the county council, when we started down this path of becoming interactive and having our permits online, that we have a portal that would be available for the community, whether they wanted something from parks or something from recreation or something from CUF. So the three of us were clustered together for the purpose of having a shared platform and that's how that came to be about. But it has been challenging, to say the least, to find a vendor who could meet the needs of all three organizations Because, as I said, we each have different mandates, we have different practices, different services, so it's challenging.

Derek Ross:

Yes, yes, yes, sarah, I know our last podcast. We were talking about just that fresh energy, fresh, fresh, new, new. Activemontgomeryorg.

Sarah Hoffman:

I know we've talked about it briefly in your short time here Awesome time here but anything about Active Montgomery that you can probably share, about what you've noticed or anything- yeah, I think the great advantage of Active Montgomery, like Ramona said, is that everything is in one place, so you're not having to go to the website for this department and then go to the website for this office.

Sarah Hoffman:

I think it's great that it's consolidated, and I think a really an advantage of the website is its ability to incorporate more of those interactive materials, so pictures or the virtual tours, or maybe even like videos, um, to be able to get a sense of the space that you may be potentially reserving if you're not able to go in person. I think that can also sometimes be. Its downfall, though, is that it is a lot of information on one page A lot so if you're not like super familiar with how to navigate it, it can be a bit of a challenge. So I think that's where we can come in with like communications and outreach to like help people like better navigate the page and hopefully, like get that feedback from the surveys to figure out how can we better organize it. So it's a little bit more like intuitive and easier to navigate for people, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Derek Ross:

Well, you feel like you've been here for a couple years. Yeah, she does sound like that.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Have you used active before you came to us?

Sarah Hoffman:

I have not used before. So it was my first time looking through it like a couple of weeks ago.

Derek Ross:

Wow, wow. So you just look, oh okay, well, I mean I guess we're good to go now. We are in good hands, you know there have been.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

I'm not saying I've heard this a lot, but I have heard complaints and concerns that there are performance issues, whether it's from staff trying to do the behind the scenes and the internal things, or it's from the community trying to reserve something on a go live day or just a regular.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

I want to have a pickup game in a gym one night one week with five guys or five gals either way or five whoever's, and and I've heard those complaints and I feel their pain because I've been on active and I've reserved things for my personal activities and I've had challenges, but we have been working really hard really hard to improve that and the performance has improved, and one of the things that has helped that is we've banded together as organizations whether it's Parks, Rec or CUPF individually or us as a group where we have group meetings with the vendor and we explain to them what our performance needs are, and they have done things like increased our cloud coverage or written new code so that it would accommodate more and be able to be more interactive or handle more of a workload.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

We at CUPF have also tried to contribute to improving the performance by the fee schedule we've come up with. That has significantly decreased the number of offerings in terms of types of fees and packaging. We've tried to categorize things that weren't categorized before, so hopefully all of that will help speak things up too. So it's been a work in progress that continues to be a work in progress.

Derek Ross:

Absolutely, absolutely. We've danced around a little bit. I know, when we've done like our blogger which we can talk about and stuff like that, when we're posting about like updates and stuff like that, we'll try to like have pictures or have things. I wouldn't say shaded it out, because we don't want to shade out everything, to kind of take you away from it, but we want to make sure you understand that Acton Montgomery has a lot of thumbnails and these thumbnails are very vibrant pictures. I actually do enjoy the pictures, especially from recreation. When they're posting all this stuff, I've told them at plenty of times Parks, I love pictures of trees. I think the pictures are awesome.

Derek Ross:

Shout out to Michelle Bean. Michelle is one of the individuals that we work with in regards to VSI and everything like that. Vsi is pretty much the company, in other words, that's worked with ActiveMontgomeryorg. But, yeah, yeah, everything is coming together. There's so much more work to be done, but that is ActiveMontgomeryorg. That is where you go to kind of do pretty much everything in regards to what Ramona just said reservations, classes and everything else like that. So, as we keep it moving, we can discuss on a bigger platform and I'll throw this ball back to Ramona Our resources. If you didn't know that, this episode is about resources, updates and just general reminders, if we can, in regards to keeping the community engaged. Ramona, you know we have a list of our resources. Is there anything about the resources? And we can go through that list. That stands out to you. Did you want to read the list? Just give people an idea, or I can read it out. Either way, the whole point is I think it's awesome when a director speaks about this stuff.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Okay, All right. So we have a list right here in front of us that includes six resources, but there are many more, too Many more. So, for example, we have the Community East Bridge, which has been around for a while. That's not new, it's been available. It's on our website. Govdelivery also has been on our website for quite a while. It's not new, and these two that I just mentioned Community East Bridge and GovDelivery are great sites to go to when we're talking about inclement weather and you're trying to understand is the facility open? Are the schools delayed? Any number of things related to the permitting process.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Active Montgomery we just spent time talking about Social media handles. Now that's becoming even more expansive because, in addition to the traditional ones, like Twitter and X and any of the other things that aren't coming to my mind right now, there's also LinkedIn, where we have a very active page, and I have been seeing a lot of things lately on LinkedIn, because I keep getting these emails that you were in so many searches today and I'm like who cares? But but when I do go, I do see Montgomery County, cause I'm I'm follow quite a few of the agencies which I would like it if people would follow CUPF, because you'd be able to find out a lot, not only about CUPF, but also about Montgomery Parks and about recreation and some of the other partners that we have in our MCPS a lot of things. So that's our social media handles, which we are trying to expand, not only what we're already on, but increasing and including others. We're also very active on library site with interactive information in the different libraries that you can find.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

The CUPF website, as we've all been talking about, has a lot of pictures. It has a lot of dropdowns with information links that you can use, and then, of course, the podcast, which you're listening to now and again. It'd be great if you were a follower and subscribed, but we, we really are happy We've. I've been noticing the numbers are going up on our podcast, which is great. So we we hope we're bringing you good information. You can always, on either our website or some of our social media handles, reach out to us and give us ideas of things that you might like to hear or that are of interest to you.

Derek Ross:

We are. This is episode nine. We are working. This is a work in progress, but we're working on it, you know we're putting this together.

Derek Ross:

This is being put together not by duct tape. This is being put together by some good, good, old fashioned. We're going to work on this, collaborate and we're going to make this happen, and that's very true. And I, working with communications, is one of the primary people working with Ramona, working with Ron, working with so many managers and actually at CUPF, working with Civic Build, and we're working with so many different individuals to kind of make this come together, get this to come together.

Derek Ross:

But the Community Use Bridge like as Ramona said, she went through every one of them Community Use Bridge is pretty much the most interesting one because it's our blogger page. The GovDelivery one is definitely very unique. It's a unique portion that pretty much once you're logged in or once you sign up for you can kind of get access through other agencies as well. There's options to checkbox more people or other departments that you want to follow and get an idea about it. But most important part is the podcast. The podcast is a great way that we can just talk about it. I know we can also put it in text and put it down, but podcasts we can just talk about. Plus, we get to hear everybody. We get to hear Ramona the director what the director's thinking about and everything like that.

Derek Ross:

You see, I love throwing it in there.

Sarah Hoffman:

Just got communities public facilities director Ramona bale pearson uh so just to get that going, sarah, sarah, what is your take about all of this stuff? As we talk about resources and everything else, yeah, I think just having a variety of formats and methods that people can get connected with is really great, like whether that's audio through the podcast or it's like a blog text or something more interactive, like active, active Montgomery. I think just having that variety is making sure that's accessible for whoever and whomever wants to get this information and just being like proactive about information, so that people don't have to like constantly reach out to get information but hey, it's already on the blog page, I can read it. I think that's the great advantage of all these resources that we just talked about.

Derek Ross:

Yeah, yeah. And then, once again, there's not the harp on it too much, but when we were talking about just demographics and understanding the community.

Derek Ross:

We have to know what's the best way to have effective communication, and if we can have different angles and bring about different ways to do it, then I'm all for it, and. But thank you for bringing that up too, thank you. Thank you, ramon. I'm always for it, but thank you for bringing that up too, thank you. Thank you, ramona. I'm always going to throw flowers your way because you know there's a lot of information that you are always throwing out there and we listening. I don't want you to think I'm not listening, but I'm listening. So, sarah, I'll throw this back to you. Got a little question going on here. I know that the question is kind of just came up with that. I don't know why I try to say that so seriously, but ask the summer fellow series. This is just a question I'm going to ask you. So any and well, I'm not asking you this question. You could ask the question, sarah. Is there a question you would like to?

Sarah Hoffman:

ask. Yeah, so being as this is my first summer being familiar with the, you know, facility reservation process, I guess my question for both of you would be what should I expect for this July 15th opening day reservation for the school athletic facilities and other outdoor facilities, both in terms of what CUPF is doing, but maybe what the community should expect? Good question All right, okay.

Derek Ross:

All right.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Well, first let me say you should expect that, despite the fact that we have a new fee schedule, that will be its first premier event opportunity there will be no problems. From my lips to God's ears.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

We are anticipating that we will have a large demand, as we usually do with July 15th. July 15th is the opportunity, is the first opportunity for people to reserve fields and outdoor spaces. That is very popular and we have a process where we try to, before July 15th, which opens for the general public, have already gone through the larger leagues and groups that have historical precedence with our group to have an opportunity for them to get a certain amount of time which will leave a fair amount of time for the community, the idea being we don't want large leagues and large groups going on and taking everything at the drop of a hat on July 15th, when it opens at 630 or whenever it opens.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

It's bad that I don't know exactly, but I think it's 630.

Derek Ross:

You're right, You're right. Okay, good, good, good good.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

So we do have that process set up, but it is very important from the community's perspective to realize it's a first come, first serve, so you need to be on your laptop and you need to be ready to go. It's not as bad as Comic-Con Anybody that's been to Comic-Con because I've been to Comic-Con where you got your laptops and everybody in the house has a laptop and everybody's got it open. Everybody's got their code word and you're keying in as soon as things open up. It's not that bad. But you do need to be proactive and realize that if there's something that you want, you need to have a plan before that time on the 15th and you need to know what you're going to do and you need to get in there and do it. Yeah.

Derek Ross:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, ramona, spot on. I mean, that's pretty much it July 15th opening day reservation for school athletic fields and other outdoor facilities. And you throw that other in there because there's there's other outdoor facilities. I mean, there's just that many facilities that you can reserve through CUPF. There's parking lots, what is it? We're talking about fields, parking lots, tennis courts, basketball courts, outdoor, outdoor, outdoor. And if there's any questions or thinking like, well, what can I do?

Derek Ross:

Is it just tennis, like? Well, you know, talk to us. You know, reach out to core services, email us, call us. If there are ideas that you would like to utilize or bring forth to the table, let us know. But make sure you communicate that the Act of Montgomery is there. It'll give you some information if you're looking to reserve facilities and stuff like that. But the earlier the better in regards to your decisions.

Derek Ross:

But, sarah, I will probably say from a communication standpoint, a lot of that information just is based on how it gets packaged. A lot of it we look to see where the numbers and what's the percentage points of what people are opening from GovDelivery and emails and checks like that. So we're trying to get an idea of where is the community at, where are they listening, what's the most important part about it? And that's the most interesting part I'll probably also say, on the July 15th it probably just smells like coffee. When you walk in you just hear it, brain sizzling because people doing all of this. No, it's not, it's not like that at all Actually.

Derek Ross:

No, I've actually been really impressed with the opening days. There's been one opening day where it kind of got a little little complicated a little little bit. We'll put it like that Checkbox, that a little bit later on Bookmark but for the most part they've gone very well. A lot of it is based off of what the community is willing to do. So, as we close this out, this is an opportunity. Sarah, any highlights thus far, any highlights that you can bring about from what you've learned at Summerfellow, which it doesn't have to be with CUPF, but is there anything that you would like to share with the community a little bit?

Sarah Hoffman:

I think just getting more familiar with Montgomery County and I mean I grew up in Northern Virginia so I was like semi familiar with you know, like the Prince George's in Montgomery County but looking more into like the demographics information like we talked about, but then also now like diving deep into looking at all the facilities information, just has kind of opened my eyes to like it's really diverse county like areas closer to where we are in Rockville right now versus like areas more in up county.

Sarah Hoffman:

There's just a great diversity of like landscapes and of people in this county and I feel like the work that we've done so far through CUPF but also through like my research project, has really just shown me what the diversity in this county is and how that's a really great advantage. Um, so I would say that was like one of my highlights and just being able to talk to different people in the office and reach out and get different resources in terms of like the survey information or looking at the facility information or, you know, diving deep into like Active Montgomery and just seeing how things operate and what you need and the people you need to make these things like operate smoothly, has just been really insightful for me because I I don't feel like I've ever thought about that before. It's like who are the people behind this website making sure everything operates, you know well, and that people get the services they want? But being able to get that like behind the scenes?

Derek Ross:

look, that's been really great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you, sarah. Thank you, sarah. Yeah, look at you, let's see.

Sarah Hoffman:

See.

Derek Ross:

I'm feeling good, feeling good, feeling good, ramona, as we get ready to close out this podcast, I just want to also make sure I know you've been throwing out that retirement word and it's so I'm just bringing it up. We're going off the cuff, we're going off the CUPF.

Derek Ross:

Anyway, I just want to make sure that you know that we appreciate you, so much oh thank you, yeah, yeah, all the information you're providing is very helpful and I and I, and I think I heard that you signed on for another 30 years, so I just want to let you know welcome back welcome back, right right, you don't want to be propping me up when I'm 90 and we were 20 46 and we're gonna have you're going to have new plans and stuff, but yes, yes, yeah, it's always great to get to have people smiling and enjoying it, but we're going to close out the podcast.

Derek Ross:

I guess we can. Also, since we're talking about acting Montgomery, talking about websites and resources, I want to give a shout out to our CUPF IT. There's a lot of work that's being done. I know CUPF IT. If they're not front and center, they're the individuals that are working behind the scenes. So I want to make sure that Paul and Dan are aware that we appreciate you. Thank you so much for all the work when we submit information or asking stuff to get done to our websites, our blog and everything else. Active Montgomery as well, too. Shout out to Michelle. There's so much that comes from IT, working in technology and also all the wonderful people in technology.

Sarah Hoffman:

Tebbs I know we got some people in the room as well too. We appreciate you so much, all the work that you do. Sarah, got any last few words? Uh, I would just encourage people to what we talked about last podcast, like do the survey or reach out in any way, whether that's like through the social media, handles cup website, um to just give feedback on what they think would help make the experience like even better for them.

Derek Ross:

And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, this is resources, updates and reminders, just to let you know. So there's so much more information. Let's close it with Ramona.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

Uh oh.

Derek Ross:

Ramona, last few words, anything that you want to, just give us something.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

I think that your shout out to IT is is worth echoing again. We have Paul Hibbert, who has done an excellent job not only for us but for Montgomery Parks and for recreation.

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

He tends to be the glue that holds everything together and I do appreciate his efforts and his work. Dan Ditto has been our IT internal person that handles the day-to-day operations for CUPF with regard to if we need laptops, do we need phones, do we need any things dealing with our internal IT system. So between the two of them, they've got a lot covered for us and we're very fortunate, as an organization as small as we are, to have two very talented and qualified IT people. So I really appreciate them and, as you said, also I really appreciate Joel, who does our podcast assistance and make sure that we sound very melodious when we are presenting our programming, so I do thank you for that, joel.

Derek Ross:

Yeah, oh yeah, look at us, look at us. Shout out, shout out. No Joel in the corner. So we appreciate you. We appreciate you, but once again, thank you very much for listening Off the CUPF. Community use of public facilities. This is our resources updates, reminders, just keeping the community engaged and aware of our events. July 15th opening day reservations. Don't forget 630 am. Be ready to log in. 6:30 am. What's that? Is that still? Are we still saying Easter time, or is this? Is it different? Well, anyway, the whole point is 6"30 am, early in the morning. Decaf or caffeinated, whatever we get, whatever you're drinking on, just get ready to get, get ready to rock and we'll see you. But thank you again, bye everybody.

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