Ideas For the New Budget

Government tends to grow and grow, becoming fat and bloated, because there is no profit motive, no competition and they have a monopoly on force (i.e. if you don’t pay the ludicrous sums demanded, you go to jail or have your house taken away). Most people are extremely busy earning the very money to be grabbed by government boobs and don’t have the time to complain as their taxes inch up relentlessly (or jump dramatically as in the case of this year’s 20% property tax increases)

Eventually you end up with something like the City of Lampasas IT Department (aka the Department of Redundancy Department) which somehow blows over $300,000 per year and employs two unqualified nitwits who then hire TSM Consulting for more money to do their work for them (and who only work 10 months out of the year for a six-figure salary and benefits).

Or you end up casually paying $125,000 for an elevator for city hall when there is a perfectly good bid for $96,000 sitting on your desk.

Or you piss away nearly $100,000 on an A/V system for city council because you can’t be bothered to go out an bid the project competitively.

Or you blow a million dollars running electricity and water/sewer to a “business park” which was a moronic idea to begin with and which sits there as a 165-acre weed patch….and which I now hear rumblings may be re-purposed to provide “affordable housing” (more on this in the future).

Or you hand Halff Associates a $120,000.00 consulting fee to “plan” the Lampasas economy for you, even thought we ALREADY have a Lampasas Economic Development Corporation spending well over that amount annually.

Or you incinerate $1.5 million remodeling Old City Hall – a project that was originally rejected when it was only $350,000 but somehow grew into a $1,500,000.00 monstrosity.

Or you squander a few hundred thousand dollars on steel paneling and lights for a rodeo arena that was totally unnecessary and which just happened to be championed by a city council member who was a member of the riding club…and which I believe might be used twice a year. If that.

These irresponsible actions are the actions of a government which has WAY too much money rolling in and clearly doesn’t value it. They have enjoyed the fruits of a supposed ten-year “booming economy”, and have become very accustomed to throwing money down the toilet without a second thought.

Well, trees don’t grow to the sky and all good things come to an end. Very likely, we will experience a recession soon and these idiots will be staring at a giant six-figure hole in their budget. Which they will then plug not by lowering salaries, benefits or spending, but by jacking up your taxes and utility rates as they always do.

SO – maybe City Council should be proactive for once and cut the copious amounts of fat NOW….THIS YEAR, so they are prepared when the downturn inevitably arrives. Sounds crazy, right?? My next post will provide lots of quick and easy ways to slash spending and shrink the bloated and wasteful city government.

Old City Hall STILL Not Complete???

I’m no detective, but the complete and utter lack of crowing about the new $1.5 million City Hall renovation and its nearly $100,000 A/V system for the last 4 months tells me this thing STILL isn’t done yet!

Remember back in mid-March when Finley informed us there would be a two-week delay on the elevator? That was a mere two weeks AFTER he told us it would be all done in a week or two.

Well, here we are FOUR MONTHS LATER…and I have STILL not seen any huge puff piece in the Lampasas Dispatch crowing about the $1.5 million dollar monstrosity. What’s the hold up? Is the elevator STILL not installed?

I find it impossible to believe that when this vanity project is done, Finley won’t invite the Lampasas Dispatch in for a photo shoot and make a BIG announcement for all of us peons to come to the next City Council meeting and grunt our approval. The wretched masses can “oooohhhh” and “ahhhhhh” and stroke the FOUR expensive 70-inch TV sets and the $5,000 DVR box like primitive monkeys stroking the giant black monolith in “2001 – A Space Odyssey“.

Yes, that is how I imagine they see us.

I mean, Monica Can’t-Wright even went out and bought 100 stackable chairs (four years ago) for this momentous occasion! This is the VERY DEFINITION of the community event Finley claims the $1.5 million debacle was built for! Yet we haven’t heard a peep in the newspaper and I haven’t seen a SINGLE mention in the council minutes – which I watch like a hawk.

I’m wondering if it has anything to do with the big pile of shit that has been sitting on the west side of the building for the last 6 months – which looks suspiciously like a disassembled $125,000 elevator to my untrained eyes.

As you may recall, former genius council member Chris Harrison thought the city should ignore the cheapest $96,000 bid for the elevator from Austin Elevators and instead go with the $125,000 elevator from RKJ Construction. He wanted to “keep it local” – which are apparently government code words for “get bent over and screwed hard”.

Again, this is all speculation on my part. If any of my usual City Hall birdies wish to chirp about this issue, you know where to find me.

Lampasas County Appraisal District Gets 4% Raise…After 11% Raise Last Year.

In a totally expected move, the Lampasas County Appraisal District Commissioner’s Court voted 4-1 to approve their new budget – which includes a 4% increase in salaries. Kudos to Mark Rainwater for voting against this nonsense and pointing out that LAST YEAR they raised the salaries 11%. Must be nice to get a 15% raise in two years. In my 35 years of working, I’m pretty sure that has never happened to me….because I’m a sap who has always worked in the private sector instead of having my lips clamped on the government titty.

Naturally they trotted out the tired old tripe about needing to overpay everyone so they don’t leave for greener pastures. It is an argument only a government official could believe. In the real world, if you post a “help wanted” ad and you get a LOT of people applying (like the LCAD recently did (5 resumes) and like the city of Lampasas did (54 resumes) when they created the Assistant City Manager position) that means your offered salary (AND BENEFITS) are plenty generous. It doesn’t matter what Austin or Dallas are doing down the road.

Comparing salaries to Austin or Round Rock or Georgetown is an idiotic endeavor. Yes, they might get paid more in those towns, but the cost of living is much higher and there are other negative externalities like traffic, noise and pollution.

Furthermore, you would think the price of “appraising stuff” would go DOWN over time, since these people have access to unprecedented amounts of information very easily now: Zillow, Redfin, drone images, Google Earth and many others have mountains of real-world data on prices that an appraiser from 20 years ago could only dream of.

Once again, the giant claw of government grabs more and more from the citizens. Anyone want to bet on the over/under for next year’s salary increase? I’ll go with over 4% yet again next year.

Marble Falls ALSO Has No IT Department.

Marble Falls – which is right down the street and has a similar population – ALSO has no IT department. According to Kaleb Kraenzel, the Assistant City Manager: “currently, our organization contracts out with a local company for that service”.

That makes TEN cities our size I have checked with and ZERO IT Departments. That’s 0-10 on IT Departments….not a very good batting average, even for government work. The facts look worse for Monica and Kristy every time I get a response from another city manager.

Marble Falls takes in about FIVE TIMES the money we do in sales tax ($150k per month versus $750k), so there is clearly more money sloshing around there….yet STILL no IT department.

I asked Mr Kraenzel how much they spend on their IT contract and am waiting to hear back.

Hell, even Copperas Cove, which is around FIVE TIMES our population, only spends about $380,000 on their IT. Five times larger yet they spend roughly what we do? Very odd.

Clearly, we are overstaffed. I’m going to call the Lampasas IT Department the Department of Redundancy Department from now on. Monica has been feathering her nest for almost 14 years now. Perhaps it is time for a change.

Lampasas City IT Department Should Be Eliminated and Outsourced – May Save the City Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars PER YEAR.

[QUICK synopsis for those of you new to this site: our IT Department consists of TWO people – neither of whom hold basic network certifications from Microsoft or Cisco and who subsequently pay TSM Consulting tens of thousands more per year to do THEIR network jobs for them. Monica Wright was somehow awarded with the sinecure (look it up, Monica) of Director of the IT ‘Department’ 13 years ago and her BFF and underling Kristy Acevedo comprises the rest of the “department”. Their ‘department’ was budgeted THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS this past year…which includes their $181,000 in salary and benefits – see page 24 and 25].

[Monica came to my attention last July when she oversaw the award of a no-bid contract to Azbell Electronics for almost $100,000 for the City Council chambers A/V system (TVs and microphones, essentially). I later discovered City Hall had actually gone out for competitive bid the FIRST time on this and had awarded the contract to Broadcast Works for $34,000. This was then rescinded for reasons unknown and the contract awarded with NO BIDDING to Azbell Electronics, also for reasons unknown].

I have spent the last week going over the city budgets of NINE other random small towns in Texas to see if THEY waste such colossal sums on an IT “department”. They are all very close to us in population size, although some are slightly larger and have a higher per-capita income. I used THIS list to find my candidates.

I have also sent an email (twice) to the manager of all those cities, although some never bothered to answer me. Either way, I looked over their city budget AND their city organizational flow charts looking for “IT Department” or “Technology Department” or something similar.

NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE TOWNS HAD AN IT DEPARTMENT OR TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT.

Not only did they not have a DEPARTMENT – they didn’t even have a PERSON. They outsourced their IT to large, expert companies like Barcom, TSM, or Network Plus.

The cities I researched are: Carthage, Gladewater, White Oak, Princeton, Hitchcock, Sanger, Crockett, Kaufman and Silsbee. Results are as follows:

Kaufman city manager Mike Slye told me they have a third-party contract for all IT services. He did not say which company it was.

Hitchcock city administrator Marie Gelles told me they “have a third-party contract with Barcom for IT services“. I requested the amount spent or a link to that department…no answer yet.

Carthage budget, website and organizational chart show no IT Department. I am waiting to hear back from city manager Stephen Williams CPA. They DO, however, have a civic center which ran a $112,000 deficit last year ($147,400 to operate vs $35,000 in revenue). The year before that, it ran a $92,000 deficit. Bruce “The Rascal” Haywood’s micro-penis will probably become fully erect after reading about that kind of reckless and profligate spending.

White Oak city manager Melba Haralson told me “we contract out those services“. Side note – this was one of the more impressive websites I navigated – slick, fast and extremely well laid out. Whoever is in charge of all that is quite a professional…an “anti-Monica”, if you will. Their budget summary and layout is incredible. [Fun fact: their expenditure on city salaries and benefits in the latest budget is $2,374,216 ($1.354 million of that is police). Ours is over $8 million.]

Gladewater apparently has never heard of email. I can’t find a single email for ANY city employees or departments. By far the shittiest and most incomplete of all the websites. In other words – perfect. The city probably spends close to nothing on a site nobody goes to anyways. Brilliant. I’d be shocked if they have a Monica or Kristy type on their payroll milking them dry. Maybe I’ll call them.

Crockett appears to have no IT Department. They are the city I profiled the other day who blow $86,000 per year on a civic center operating deficit. Waiting to hear back from the city administrator John Angerstein (awesome name). [Fun fact: city of Crockett operating budget of $8.1 million….they also spend $3.289 million on personnel – we spend over $8 million]

Princeton Assistant City Manager Lesia Gronemeier told me that “currently we contract this service out and will continue to do so for approximately the next three years“. Their budget shows no sign of an IT or tech department (page 22 organizational chart). Pretty sweet website for this city as well.

Sanger also has a fairly slick website and awesome budget page but appears to have no IT department (page 29 organizational chart). I could not find an email for a city manager or other big wig, so I emailed the city council….waiting to hear back. [Fun fact: very similar in government size to Lampasas with around 100 employees and a $25 million budget – however, “salaries and benefits” total $6.241 million in Sanger (page 49) and over EIGHT MILLION in Lampasas (so we somehow spend about 30% more on salaries and benefits)]

Silsbee city manager DeeAnn Zimmerman was very pleasant to deal with and informed me that “the city of Silsbee uses Network Plus for all of our IT work”….so they have no IT Department.

It is my belief that City Council and the City manager of Lampasas (Finley DeGraffenreid) need to seriously look at this department and decide if TWO full time employees are actually needed. I find it very hard to believe that the tiny town of Lampasas has 80 hours of IT work per week to keep them both occupied all day long. And by “IT work” I mean actual IT work (server migration, installing cabling, troubleshooting)….not Monica running over to the library or golf course to change a printer cartridge. I’m pretty sure every grown adult knows how to do that.

My personal belief is that the second IT position was created because (1) Monica was incapable of doing the work and (2) Monica then gets to be a “director” of this one-woman department – which I assume comes with higher pay and even less work. If the city had hired a competent IT tech to begin with, there would have never been a need for someone else.

It seems to me there are several options, all of which benefit the taxpayer:

  1. Eliminate the entire department and outsource everything. Gary Cox should get on the horn and talk to all these other cities to see if this is feasible. If they can outsource to TSM or Network Plus or Barcom for, say, $120k per year, they are STILL saving $180k per year overall – or $1.8 million over the next ten years. Think of all the roads and water lines that could be properly maintained with that money.
  2. Eliminate the second (redundant) “network administrator” job and give Monica a chance to actually get certified to do real IT work so she never has to call TSM consulting – this would result in TSM’s contract being cancelled – saving tens of thousands per year and also saving around $80,000 more as Acevedo’s redundant job position is eliminated. It would also mean Monica actually has to work full time instead of taking off 8 weeks per year. This would save about $1 million over ten years.
  3. Fire Monica and Kristy both as unqualified, hire some 24-year-old tech nerd right out of school who DOES possess all the normal network qualifications (Cisco or Microsoft) and let him actually do everything the job requires (no more calling TSM and handing them $30,000 a year to solve your problems for you) – a “one man department” who is well-qualified and pay him a decent wage. This eliminates the TSM contract as well as Monica and Kristy’s bloated salaries – or probably around $1.1 million over ten years.

Field Guide to Local Fauna

Boobus Lampasicanus in repose
  • Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Chordata
  • Class: Mamalia
  • Order: Sirenia
  • Family: Lampasicus ignoramus
  • Genus: Moronicus
  • Top speed: Four miles per hour fully charged
  • Mating patterns: Surely you jest
  • Range and habitat: well-worn path between home and grocery store

Many of you may be joining us from a Facebook mention….and I appreciate whoever drove thousands of viewers to this site, as my primary focus is waste and incompetence in local city government. The more people who read and learn about the shenanigans of local governance the better.

But I also consider this site to be educational. Some of you may also be new to the area, so I thought it would be nice to introduce you to some of the very bizarre creatures you may find roaming this part of Texas.

Above is a photo of a typical Boobus Lampasicanus in his native environment. Note the open mouth. This is the default position for this noisy creature – either for loudly spouting idiotic notions at town hall meetings or ingesting Krab Kingz food truck offerings during feeding hours.

This creature emits a warbling sound when excited…a babbling that sounds a lot like “civic CEN-ter….civic CEN-ter“. If approached, he will warble louder and drown out all other animals in the area. Scientists believe this may be a diversionary tactic. The Boobus may believe that if it repeats its nonsense loudly enough or often enough, others may listen to it and take it seriously.

Although not as intelligent as other domesticated animals like the dog or the pig, he has nonetheless been known to form rudimentary thoughts on Facebook by slapping the keyboard with his flipper-like appendages. His lack of dexterity and smarts leads to bizarre punctuation and random capitalization of letters. Almost as if he were trying to mimic real human thoughts. Like a monkey. Only much bigger.

Zoologist Clinton Hart Merriam has described the Boobus as a “slow-witted beast”.

Conservation: this species of Boobus is listed by the World Conservation Union as LC or “least concern” as the Boobus runs rampant in these parts. There is, unfortunately, no risk of extinction for this meddlesome pest.

Mark It Zero, Dude!

Zero.

That is how many computer “experts” and IT Directors and Network Administrators the town of Kaufman, TX currently employs.

Kaufman is yet another small town about our size…another three hour drive up the road. Their median income is about 15% higher than ours and they are slightly larger. All in all, a decent comparison. Seeing those numbers, you’d think they would probably spend as much or more on a “technology” department than Lampasas does. Wrong.

How can this be?? I emailed the Kaufman city manager, Mike Slye, and asked him this very question. His answer verbatim from my email inbox:

“Third-party contract for IT services”

Oh….you mean like how our IT Director Monica Wright calls TSM Consulting or Cardinal Tracking or some dude named Neil Caldwell to do her work for her because she is completely inept and possesses no network certifications at all…just like our SECOND technology clown Kristy Acevedo?? You mean like how the city hands TSM Consulting $1,800 per month, every month, year in and year out, to be on call for any networking problems?

Yeah, kinda like that…except they aren’t dumb enough to pay TWO bozos a six-figure sum to sit in a chair all day and make those calls, like we do. Somebody else probably spends 3 minutes making that call – like the assistant city manager or something.

In other words, we could jettison the two bozos (who have proven incapable in the first place) and cut out the middle-(wo)men and just have TSM Consulting do all the work they are probably doing anyways? What a novel idea.

PROS: This would save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars per year AND free up two new grocery baggers for HEB to hire.

CONS: Monica and Kristy get even more angry at me.

As you can see, this is a terrific trade-off for the average citizen taxpayer of Lampasas….and one we should all be willing to make.

“It’s Making My Head Spin How Many Activities We Could Do!”

I just had to post this. Every time Boobus Lampasicanus bellows about “how many activities” we could do with a huge, multi-million dollar civic center, I am reminded of another ill-advised construction project from the movie “Step Brothers“.

Two adult morons (sound familiar?) come up with the terrible idea to build bunk beds to free up floor space so they can do “lots and lots of activities”…right before they jump into bed and the whole thing crashes down on top of them.

I picture Bruce “The Rascal” Haywood as a very portly Will Ferrell stomping around in circles muttering about all the activities he has room for now…without ever going into any details. Finley is, of course, the poor Dad down the hall who has to put up with all this ridiculous shit.

Crockett, Texas Has a Civic Center! Probably Wish They Didn’t…

Being the local gadfly (look it up, Monica…) is hard and thankless work. (OK, not COMPLETELY thankless…those 27 of you who thank me in private really help keep me going). While the rest of you were busy eating Spring Ho turkey legs and posting drunken Facebook videos, I was combing through stats and budgets from other Texas towns our size so I can get an idea of how our government wastes so much money (*COUGH* Information Systems Department *COUGH**COUGH business park *COUGH*)

I get my candidate towns from a list found HERE. I stumbled upon Crockett Texas – a similar-sized town about three hours from here. As I was eyeing their budget (and noticing they had NO Tech Department at all, let alone TWO tech bozo clowns on payroll), I saw a line item for “civic center” and had to do a double take. The first tiny town I picked randomly actually was stupid enough to do the civic center thing??

Yep. Must be a town infested with Bruce Haywood clones. I shudder at the thought.

Amusingly, the annual operating budget for 2018 was $101,000 – which made me feel extremely smart, since I recently guestimated the operating cost of a Lampasas Civic Center “could easily run into six figures”. Care to guess what the revenues were? Bruce? Any other boobs? Do you even know what “revenues” are?

Revenues for 2018 were $15,000. For those of you mathematically challenged, that is an $86,000 loss every year. I can think of better ways to spend $86,000 per year. Roads, sewer and water come to mind.

Bruce, have you ever thought to yourself “I need to get to Crockett and support that local community!”…no, you haven’t. Just like nobody is going to rush to Lampasas just because they build a civic center.

A quick look at the calendar for this civic center shows page after page after page of….nothing.

According to the website, the center was built in 1987…so I’m guessing it DIDN’T cost the $5 million or so we would have to waste on a similar facility. I’m also guessing Crockett doesn’t have anything else going on there – unlike this town, which has an absurd number of parks, trails and fields to keep you occupied. Not to mention Hidden River right down the street, if a large space is needed.

So, Bruce and other Civic Center Boobs: do you STILL want to waste millions on a civic center that will very likely run a huge deficit every year and sit unused 97% of the time? I know it kills Bruce and other boobs to see piles of money sitting in city coffers unspent. But I have a solution for that too:

GIVE IT BACK TO THE TAXPAYERS. Feel free to LOWER the tax rates and decrease our effective rate. Pretty sure there is no law against that.

“Boobus Lampasicanus” Spotted at Town Meeting

Believe it or not, there are actually times I feel sorry for Finley and Misti. The latest local town hall meeting, where they had to politely listen to several morons spout idiotic ideas for wasting tax money is definitely one of those times. Just reading these ideas after the fact made me want to strangle a couple of people for having their head so far up their anus and wasting everyone’s time.

Let me start by explaining: I am of the firm belief that everyone is NOT entitled to their opinion just because they exist and breathe air – because most of those opinions are ill-informed, poorly researched or not thought through at all. They are wish lists compiled by morons who don’t know the first thing about cost benefit analysis.

For example: If I was sitting with a group of Intel engineers who were discussing options for their new 5 nanometer chip fabrication plant, and I insisted on wasting everyone’s time by getting my fair turn at the microphone just because I occupied a chair in the room….I would be a complete and total jerk-off because I know NOTHING about 5 nanometer chip engineering.

But knowing nothing about a topic and not thinking things through has never stopped the species known locally as Boobus Lampasicanus (the common Lampasas Boob) from spouting a bunch of moronic ideas at the town hall meetings.

I am going to name names and take verbal dumps on the heads of these boobs publicly, because I also believe that by pointing them out (rather than politely nodding my head in agreement) and ridiculing them, a lot of bad ideas might get nipped in the bud instead of never dying the death they deserve.

[NOTE: If morons were laughed at and their ideas immediately shot down instead of politely ignored and thus tacitly agreed too, we might not be in the mess we are in today as a country. Imagine if all the rational people ten years ago had laughed at the dangerous liberal boobs who suggested there are actually more than two genders….we would not have grown adult teachers in Texas and elsewhere this very minute giving credence to the ludicrous notion that people are “gender fluid” and there are more genders just than male and female. Nor would we have people being sued or fired for refusing to believe such absurd horseshit].

I am referring, of course, to the idea of a convention center or civic center for the tiny town of Lampasas.

This has to be one of the most idiotic wastes of money ever conceived. I have seen mentions of this in City Council minutes for YEARS. The numbers being thrown around are in the MILLIONS. Pretty sure I saw an estimate of $2.5 million and that was several years ago. It took our local government wizards $1.5 million just to renovate an existing structure [Old City Hall] far smaller than a convention center….so you can count on that $2.5 million ballooning into at LEAST $4 million.

Hell, the tithes to Pope Eckermann ALONE would be in the high six figures, I would guess. If the Pope can milk a water line design for $25,000, imagine the skim and nest feathering on a big project like a civic center – he’d probably be buying a second or third house with the proceeds. Don’t even get me started on the money Monica Can’t-Wright could waste on this with some kind of no-bid public-address system or computerized lighting.

Why does this bad idea keep resurfacing? Because morons like boobus Lampasicanus Bruce “The Rascal” Haywood stand up at a town meeting and spout nonsense like “such a facility would give Lampasas a great way to market itself as a destination and to attract tourists to spend money in the city“.

Are you shitting me?? Does this idiot ACTUALLY THINK people in, say, Austin are going to say to each other: “wow! Lampasas – that piss ant small town about 90 minutes from here – just built a 12,000 square foot convention center! Let’s get our asses up there and blow $500 on something…anything!”

No. They are not. They won’t even come from nearby Cove – since Cove already has a convention center, seeing as how they are FIVE TIMES bigger than we are. Feel free to hold all of your “events” at the Cove Convention Center, Bruce.

We know the COSTS of this monstrosity would likely be $4 million or even $5 million (that is not even counting the ANNUAL COST to run this thing – which could easily run up into six-figures). What would the BENEFITS be?

Good question. All I hear is boobs like Haywood yammer vague assertions about all the “activities” and “events” that could be held there.

LIKE WHAT??

They never specifically say. I’ll make a few guesses:

Weddings? Guess what? A private citizen built a gorgeous wedding facility (Hidden River) for millions of dollars already and it is a stone’s throw from downtown Lampasas. No need to replicate that. It was also done with private money. Imagine that: the free-market taking care of a perceived need without fleecing the taxpayer. Wow.

Concerts? You think Cher or Hootie and the Blowfish are going to drop in and play some shows for us, you idiot? No, they are not. PLUS there are ALREADY several music venues in town provided by PRIVATE citizens risking their own money. Putters & Gutters and Toupsie’s come to mind immediately. How many venues do you need, Bruce? You complete and utter yam bag.

“There is nothing to do here” – which many of the nitwits in this town will complain about until our sun goes supernova, despite having TONS to do for such a small town. We have a ridiculous number of public parks, sports fields and trails for such a small town – and they ALREADY all cost a lot of tax money to keep groomed and maintained. The aforementioned Putters & Gutters has about 25 different things to keep you entertained. I have NEVER seen Bruce Haywood stick his head into that place….and I have to think he’d be very hard to miss.

Rodeo? Well, Council has already wasted hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on THAT horrible idea years ago [580 sports complex]…and it is used maybe a couple times a year, as far as I see. Not to mention there is ALREADY a rodeo facility nearby which can be rented out for about $500 per day.

So let’s hear it Bruce! What are all the BENEFITS of this badly-conceived civic center idea you love so much, you unmitigated clown horn?

NEXT POST: we will dig into another town hall boobus Lampasicanus named Janet Crozier who wasted everyone’s time by complaining the city needs to squander more resources by expanding its recycling program.