Off the CUPF: Community Use of Public Facilities

What’s Going On with CUPF? | Latest News and Updates

• Derek Ross and Emily Brewster-McCarthy • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this podcast, CUPF Communications and Outreach Specialist, Derek Ross will be joined by CUPF Program Specialist - Childcare & Special Projects, Emily Brewster-McCarthy. Our special guests will include CUPF’s Acting Director, Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas. Spoiler Alert!! We have a new co-host. Plus, we have exciting news!! We would like to introduce our listeners to our new Operations Manager, Eduardo Fuentes.

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Thanks for listening!!

Ramona Bell-Pearson:

We are CUPF, and thank you for joining our community podcast. Let's get started.

Derek Ross:

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Now, now, it feels good to be back. I I'm not even gonna mess around with everybody. We are back with Off the CUPF Community Use of Public Facilities podcast. This is what, episode 13? What's going on with CUPF? No, that is not me just asking the question. That is actually the title of this episode and his latest news and updates and all of that good stuff. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Once again, my name is Derek. I'm the communication specialist with CUPF Community Use of Public Facilities. I'm gonna throw that in there one more time. Uh, we're gonna get into some highs and lows before we get started. I also wanted to say hello, Emily.

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

Hi. I told y'all we'd be back, right? I think the last episode I said y'all are gonna hear more from me.

Derek Ross:

Oh.

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

Uh and here I am.

Derek Ross:

The way you said, I was like, okay, okay, okay.

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

Yeah. So again, little re-intro. Uh Emily Brewster McCarthy. I'm a uh program specialist with childcare and special projects with CUPF.

Derek Ross:

Oh, that was a say that again.

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

What? Program everything.

Derek Ross:

Say that again.

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

Oh, yeah, okay. So program specialist with child care and special uh projects. Ooh. With CUPF.

Derek Ross:

Okay, okay, I like that. I like that. So you got that out. Okay, okay. And you know, before we get into all of these highs and lows, I just wanted to jump around a little bit. And, you know, we we have, we have, you know, I'm trying to figure out how do we introduce it? Because this person has a new title, a new role. They're doing so many great things in the community. They have this awesome red sweater that they're just wearing. It's just awesome. I'm I'm just talking as if you get them smiling and everything like that. Hello, Vanessa.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

Hi, guys. Hi, Vanessa. Welcome back. Thank you for having me again.

Derek Ross:

Vanessa, how how should we introduce you?

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

What is your title? Well, I am the financial administrator.

Derek Ross:

Okay.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

But temporarily I am the interim acting director.

Derek Ross:

Oh! Okay.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

Until Ramona's uh replacement is is is found. I know it's gonna be a uh difficult challenge, but uh yeah, in the interim, I am the acting director for now.

Derek Ross:

So do we merge all your titles into one? Is that how it works? Or is it just you do we just say interim director, acting director?

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

Uh you can merge it into one.

Derek Ross:

Oh, okay.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

I think.

Derek Ross:

We can do that. See, you know what? It feels good. Vanessa, we've seen you over there. I know we've been introducing you in a finance team and seeing where you're doing. You're you're doing great work, Vanessa. Just to let you know that. We're going to try to get Vanessa crying and smiling all day. If she's not crying by the end of this podcast, then I didn't do my job. I didn't do my job. But let's get into highs and lows. Highs and lows. I'll start off. I'll start off. Emily, we were out there doing, what was it, the Wheaton TJ Friday? Um, what was that, reggae last Friday? Yeah, a couple Fridays ago. It was nice. It was nice. We were out in a community. Uh, we had a little booth, our table, but you know, it felt good to get from behind the table and kind of introduce ourselves and tell people about CUPF, giving flyers and bags, the piggy banks. The piggy banks. Those goes. They go. Vanessa, thank you. Thank you again for the support, Vanessa, as well, giving us all this information about what, you know, ideas and stuff like that. My low, I think a low is uh I did recently have a computer crash on me. I uh, you know, I thought we passed that. I'm joking, it's 2025. Why is my computer crashing? But it happens, it happens. Um, whatever was good there is gone. So, you know, I'll live with that. But you know, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. But Emily, let's jump around. Highs and lows.

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

Uh, you know, my high is that it's like maybe 60-something degrees out today. And I'm super excited because I get to wear my little cardigan. Uh, I know we said Vanessa has her red one, I have my black one. Uh I'm just ready. Uh it's a CUPF cardigan. It is a CUPF cardigan. Okay. Uh it's an exclusive cardigan. Um, yeah, it's it's uh aside from how amazing the cardigan is, um, I really like the fall and like spooky season is around the corner, so I'm very excited. Um, and my low, I don't know that I really have one. I would say probably oh, well, okay. Just kidding. My low and my high low, maybe the fact that my daughter is about to go and start kindergarten, even though that's also a high, but it's like you know, I'm like bittersweet. Yeah, it's bittersweet. Um, my baby's growing up now, so it's high and low, you know.

Derek Ross:

But that just makes me feel good. Yeah, makes me feel good. Makes me feel good. Let's let's all look at Vanessa. Vanessa, acting director, Vanessa, finance team, everything, Vanessa. How are you doing? Highs and low.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

So, my high is that we had a successful go live on the 15th, which was Friday. It was it went very well. I was thinking it was gonna be a little bit more challenging, but we did okay. We did okay. And uh, I'm very happy. I'm I'm very also appreciative of the team we have at CUF. Everyone worked really hard and we were there really early from 6:30 in the morning to to five in the afternoon. And Saturday we did some support too on the back end. And um, I just want to say thank you to core services for doing such a great job, the finance team as well, and everyone also, uh, the other members of the CUF staff that were there for moral support. I appreciate you guys too. Everyone did such a phenomenal job, and I'm very impressed and proud of them. Um, for my low, I think is that summer is leaving us. And, you know, the I know that that's one of Emily's highs, but I love summer. I love the hot weather. So that that is my low. And you know, fall's coming in. I appreciate fall, but I love summer. So that's my low.

Derek Ross:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, fall, fall is fall, is falling. Is that fall is falling and trying to sound like a young person? But yes, so we, you know, that those are our highs and lows just to give people a chance of understanding that, you know, we're real people here. We have things going on, but you know what, we got community use going on too. So we're always looking into doing various things and stuff like that in the community and you know, get a taste of our highs and lows. Once again, this is community use public facilities podcast. I like to throw that in there just in case you were wondering, what are you listening to? It's CUPF, everybody. It's CUPF. Then let's mention something about faces, new faces. And I know we were all here when Ramona was here and stuff like that. When we're talking about what's going on with CUPF and new faces, how does where do we go with that? Like, how does that make me feel as a as a person who's witnessing all of this great leadership roll in? Great leadership sitting with us right now. How does that make you feel? I know, talking to you.

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

I'm actually really excited. Uh, we have some new uh administration coming in and uh management. And um, I know we're all super excited. Yeah, sure. Change can be a little nerve-wracking, but I think we have established um a lot of really awesome routines and just, you know, CUPF is is we're doing a really, really uh good job at, you know, going and doing community outreach, and we're doing a whole bunch of different things like this podcast. We just had Go Live, like we mentioned, and we're doing a lot of um team building and I think uh community building during this transition period. And we're just really excited for whoever is going to come. And I know um we do have probably one slight announcement that I'll go ahead and lob to Vanessa, but um, I won't lob it quite yet. Yeah, I mean, I'm just uh I think all of us are um excited for this new change, uh, new season, new people, new faces. Um we also have a lot of plans on um reaching out to do other kind of educational or professional outreach or enrichment. So you'll be seeing Derek and I a lot uh in different split uh places around the county. And um we're just super excited to kind of get the word out more than we already have. So, Vanessa, I don't know if you want to, you know, mention anything in terms of our change change and transition.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

I would like to, yes, yes. I do want to mention that we have a new operations manager. This was uh the new Ron Maxon, who just retired August 1st. We he's terribly missed, but we still have him as a consultant, thankfully. But um, so that our new person is Eduardo Fuentes. And he comes with over 25 years of experience in operations and facilities management, including 17 years at Montgomery College. Awesome. And he served as the building and grounds manager. So we are very happy to have him. I'm sure we will have him as a guest in the near future.

Derek Ross:

Oh, yeah.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

Yeah, so excited.

Derek Ross:

Yeah, yeah.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

The first week. How about that?

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

Hey, jump right on in.

Derek Ross:

Just jump right in. Just come in, just go ahead straight in. Oh, this is exciting. This is exciting. Thank you, Vanessa. See, thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, you know, I don't want to end the podcast. I feel like we should just keep talking and talking and talking, you know, podcast marathon. We're just gonna do it for eight hours. We got Joel in the corner helping us. No, we have other things to do as well, too. The podcast is just extra and it's good extra, too. I like doing it. And Vanessa and Emily has been awesome working with everybody, but let's let's kind of close this out. Let's kind of close this out. I figure, you know, well, why not? Why not? Um, I also want to say that, you know, working with Emily's been awesome. This has been a great experience. I can't say whether Emily's gonna be here forever, but we'll hint at that later on. I gotta, I gotta talk to so many people to kind of figure it out. But we also have Vanessa here, and Vanessa's always dropping information. But uh, you know, I want to close it out with some some some some good vibes, good vibes. Personally, I want to say thank you to the podcast team. That includes y'all. Thank you so much. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no. But no, thank you, thank you. But I appreciate it too as well. This is a great opportunity, I think, for CUPF to be able to get a lot of our information out, you know, so people can hear us talk, get our personality and see what makes it tick for us, what are we doing out here? Uh, but I also just want to say thank you. Thank you so much. Um, I'll probably end it by saying that, you know, there's so much more to come from communications, comms, marketing, outreach. We got a lot going on, um, a lot of good stuff, and it's coming together. It's coming together. We're baking this cake, everybody. But Emily, anything you want to close out the podcast with?

Emily Brewster-McCarthy:

Uh, I'm just really excited to be back. Um, this is, I think, my third episode that I've done. And like Derek said, you know, I may or may not be back. I think I kind of hinted at this earlier. Um, but I did want to add uh another thing. We have a few like outreach events during the year. And if you've never met Derek and I, that is where you'll see us. You will for sure see us. So if you want to meet the podcast, uh, you know, we're there. We have uh it might the the date might be past already, um, you know, from when we publish this, but we have some really cool opportunities. We have something happening on August 22nd. Like I said, so that probably already passed, but we have a few other events that we're planning on attending and participating in within the next fall, spring, summer. So we'll definitely keep you guys updated to see what we will be doing and uh making sure that you know you guys come out and say hi to us. Oh, yeah. Come say hi.

Derek Ross:

We're there, we're here, we're here. Uh Vanessa, how how would you like to end this podcast? You know, we always gave it to Ramon. We lobbed it up to Ramona. Yeah, we did. Ramona gate, Ramona gonna give it to us. And we so appreciative. Because you know what? The transparency is so real. Not to put that much pressure on you, but Vanessa.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

Ah, big shoes to fill. Yeah.

Derek Ross:

Not to put that much pressure, but the pressure is a pressure, the pressure.

Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas:

Oh, wow. No, I just want to thank, you know, all the listeners, all our customers. Yeah, you know, we couldn't do it without them. There's a lot of, a lot of things that that happen in the backgrounds trying to make sure that the customers are always being heard, that the customers are always being um assisted in everything that they need. And I also want to thank all of our team. You know, our team is, we have a good team. We have people that are very capable and they know what they're doing. And I'm very, I'm very happy to be part of it. And uh, you know, just to thank and thank you guys also. The communications team is awesome. You know, Emily and Derek, if you see them around, you know, they're at different events and everything, and they're always, you know, have a smile on their face and they're always putting putting a lot of effort into the goodies that we give out to people. And I think, you know, they're doing big things, great things. The communications program is is every every time I turn around, it's something new that they're doing. So I'm like, okay, great. These ideas are wonderful, and I love to see it. So thank thank you guys.

Derek Ross:

Oh, Vanessa, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, Vanessa. Thanks, Vanessa. Gotta say, like, thank you, Vanessa. Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you for listening. And we're going to cut this podcast. Why? Because you know, it's so much more to go on. We we got so much to do, so much to do. And thank you. Shout out to Joel. Shout out to Tebs, the audiovisual teams, and all of the teams that have made it making it work in the county and for the community as well, too. But thank you again. Thank you for listening, and we'll we'll check in later.

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