The company has bought the PASS Lite software and PASS cost-recovery consulting service from ePRepSolutions.
Terms were not disclosed. Just a few months ago, CivicPlus launched its own consulting service.
Those two products bought by CivicPlus provide local governments with help running and streamlining parks and recreations departments while improving cost-recovery operations, according to CivicPlus' statement.
The company says it intends to boost its own parks and rec customers with better data reporting and the ability to turn that part of government into a bigger source of revenue.
Matthew Hickey, who founded ePRepSolutions, will join CivicPlus to lead the integration of those two products into the company’s existing Recreation Management platform. He has a decade of experience helping parks and rec leaders “strategically determine service pricing,” according to the statement.
He also worked at senior operations analyst for the city of Boulder, Colo., Parks and Recreation Department for nine years.
“No technology company offers better services and solutions to local government parks and recreation departments than CivicPlus, and there is no other entity I would rather partner with to expand government access to ePRepSolutions’ powerful cost-recovery solution,” Hickey said in the statement. “I look forward to supporting the vast CivicPlus customer base in achieving their financial recreation management goals.”
The management of parks and recreation stands as a steady driver of recent government technology deals. A recent one was the acquisition by Macquarie Capital of Kalkomey, a nearly 30-year-old Texas firm that sells outdoor certification courses used by states.
Amid those deals, public agencies are rushing to make camping and other recreational licenses digital and generally update management parks and recreational areas with the newest technology.
That seems less than surprising when one considers that more than 280 million people in the U.S. visited a local park or recreational facility at least once between May 2022 and 2023, according to a survey report from the National Recreation and Parks Association, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Those visits generate at least $200 billion annually in economic activity and support more than 1 million jobs, the group also found.
“We’ve long known that our parks and recreation departments are the heartbeat of our communities and at the core of their engagement strategies,” CivicPlus CEO Brian Rempe said in the statement. “Adding a cost-recovery component to our Recreation Management solution will give our customers visibility into the integrated data they need to maximize profits that can be reinvested into programming, facilities and operations.”
