Recreation Management System – Contract Award
Motion 6 · Park Board Meeting, March 9, 2026
Summary
- Renewed the recreation management system contract with Active Network following a competitive RFP issued August 28, 2025; Active Network achieved the highest overall score across a three-phase evaluation.
- Contract required because the incumbent agreement reached its maximum allowable term under procurement policy.
- Commissioners had deferred approval at the February 2 meeting pending a more detailed report; the revised report included evaluation scoring methodology, appendices on technical requirements, and a letter of support from the Community Centre Association all-presidents group.
- Concerns raised: limited visibility into how proposals were scored; no direct public or end-user consultation built into the evaluation process (public-facing needs addressed through operational staff input and existing feedback channels); data storage confirmed as Canadian data centres with ownership retained by the City.
- Estimated transition cost to an alternative supplier: $8 million over three years, noted as context for total cost of ownership but not used as an evaluation criterion.
Vote
Public comments
Read all 3 statements
Transcript
4 segments
I do want to thank staff for bringing this back. This item returned to the board after, you know, we asked for additional clarity around the procurement process and evaluation. So I appreciate that a lot of that was brought around this time. And I appreciate that work have done you know, to provide the additional information. I can respond to our questions today. The recreation management system, like it is an important piece of infrastructure for the park system. Program registration, facility bookings, delivery of service across thousands of sites and hundreds and potentially thousands of users. So this is core operational infrastructure. So it did require quite a bit of scrutiny. And at the same time, I do want to acknowledge that the evaluation process raised some concerns for commissioners, particularly around transparency and how these types of proposals were assessed and how the final scoring was determined. A lot of it was opaque the first time around. The procurement process work best when they are not only fair, but clearly understood And when there's like limited visibility into how proposals are evaluated It can leave commissioners with like less than confidence than less confidence than we would like when making decisions of the scale and larger ones and so for that reason like I'm prepared to support this contract going forward. I do somewhat reluctantly. I know my frustrations as a user were not reflected in that evaluation process, no matter how many times I'm told that somebody spoke up for me. It wasn't in the document, and I did not see anything. I wanted the rubric. I wanted input from the community. That's not there. But I do understand, like, it works. It functions. It's reliable. And, you know, certain aspects of the community, like the APG, are supportive of it. So, like, that kind of clarity does strengthen the trust in the process and helps, you know, this board, like, fulfill its oversight role more effectively. But I do want to thank, you know, staff for providing that extra information. And, yeah, I'll support this. Thanks.
Commissioner Digby, go ahead.
Just briefly, I wanted to address the high-quality staff report that we have now before us in comparison. You know, we do want to enable staff to bring forward contracts with their procurement policy in October 25. We did raise... the numbers up to two million dollars we want staff to have full confidence that they can move forward with contracts that have already been scheduled under two million dollars but over two million dollars we really do want to have a standard that any reasonable citizen looking at the proposal should be able to say oh I see it's got some strengths and some weaknesses but overall there's a basis for support there so I appreciate everything that staff did to improve this memo and I'm sure that next time it'll be simpler and more straightforward so I'm gonna support the motion noting that it would cost us eight million dollars over three years to transition to a different supplier that's not a prop I mean that's a problem in any situation I realize that now, that that's actually a standard problem of getting locked in with any supplier, that it will always cost money to change. But that's not the city's fault. And it seems like the price we're paying is a fair price with the supplier we're going with. So I'll leave it at that.
Any further comments from commissioners?
Seeing none, I'll call a vote by a show of hands. All in favor?
That is carried unanimously. Thank you, Commissioners. As voted on earlier, we will be recessing this meeting and coming back tomorrow, I believe at 6.30? At 6.30 to complete our final item, Item 3. And the regular board meeting will be tomorrow starting at 6.30. And commissioners, if you could stick around, we do need to reconvene our in-camera meeting. Thank you, everyone. See you tomorrow.
If folks in the gallery could make your way out, we do need the room, please.
Statement Watch
to run it in favor. This is along the lines of what Angela was asking. So when I asked in around 2018 timeframe from the former general manager, the answer was that we store the data in Calgary. So that's something that, I mean, I'm totally in favor of this, but that's something that we should confirm that the data sits here and nowhere in the U.S.
Is that your only call? Okay. Do any commissioners have questions? Commissioner Herr?
Can somebody maybe answer her question?
Through the chair. Through the chair. Thank you. Through the chair, would somebody be able to answer the question about where the data is stored physically? Okay. Come on up. Thank you. Oh, just press it one more time. There you go.
Thanks. Taiki Lee, Chief Technology Officer. So the data is stored in Canadian data centres. Given the need for resilience, typically geographical resilience, it's possible that it's stored in multiple locations within Canada, so maybe not just Calgary, but certainly multiple data centres in Canada.
Statement Watch
Hi, yes, you got my name right. I'm May Ali Alvarez, and I'm speaking pretty neutrally about this in specific, but I'm just really curious about... I'm just really curious about the amount of detail that's gone into this, you know, not a seven-generation project, something that is costing the city so much less than something like the Vancouver Aquatic Centre, but it's also particularly interesting that all these considerations, you know, this motion to have the city come back and answer all these questions that I have here, you know, the due diligence that has gone into responding to the commissioner's questions. And we have, you know, all the appendixes here and your score rankings. And yet this kind of information was not given when it came to the Vancouver Aquatic Centre. So it's just interesting how much the city has to say about a project that is affecting so few people in comparison. It doesn't really matter which software you go with, which company you go with. This isn't fixing the fact of I spoke to a mother less than a month ago who has altogether stopped trying to sign her kids up for swim lessons in Vancouver. We're going to stay on the topic of the recommendation. This is about the software. Yes, we're going to stay on the topic of the software. Yeah, I am talking about the software directly right now. doesn't take away the fact that because of the like insane amount of anxiety that caused her to wait there for the 7 p.m. sign up she has stopped trying to teach her kids how to swim because she's not allowed to because parents can't teach their own children in Vancouver pools how to swim she cannot sign her kids up because there have she has tried hundreds of times and never got into some lessons so if you have crumbling infrastructure does it really matter if people have access to some software that can let them sign up for a class that isn't available. So I'm just pointing out that there's a lot of questions that were asked, and they were answered in all these different appendixes, and yet you haven't done the same thing for a project that's going to cost almost $200 million. So I think that the efforts are pretty confused, and I have a lot more to say on the topic, but you're going to just cut me off, so thank you.
Statement Watch
Hello, John Gerard speaking tonight on behalf of Protecting Our Vancouver Aquatic Centre Society about the decision for moving with this software. It's concerning, to say the least, because like Mayali had stated, We know now what goes on behind the scenes. We have discovery documents and FOI and everything. You're all aware of that. Software operates in a unique space. It's non-tangible. So when a cost of $3.7 million is being put forward to taxpayers, We question the due diligence and somewhat the motivation for moving forward with some of these projects when in a letter here regarding this item from the Association Presidents Group, it states that there is no objection to the renewal when at the last meeting there was clear objection So why are these letters once again happening behind the scenes, so to speak, where after the public brings forward very important points, why is it stated in a letter to general manager that there was no objections when that is your role to object? So all of the questions tonight have been valid, but were those at any point raised in some sort of objection? Because this motion, this item, was previously opposed. It was put forward for an amendment. I see that is present somewhat, but I still believe that the core elements of this have not been answered. So the fact that this contract of the identified RFP proponents, it is an American software company with a Canadian... side to it, but at the end of the day, there was only five proponents who put in bids for this project. And as I said, software operates in a very unique space. It's important to ensure that the correct process was undertaken when we know, in many ways, that process sometimes happens very differently.