Treatment of the public

You asked Mike of Topeka Ice what to cut? 

Go Topeka 

Forge: Why Topeka Taxpayers Shouldn’t Be Funding a Young Professionals Social Club with Sales-Tax Dollars

Go to gotopeka.com/forge-young-talent/ right now. You’ll see the glossy pitch: “Forge Young Talent” — a “dynamic group of young people ages 18-40” who network, serve on committees (Events, Marketing, Membership, Advocacy, IDEAS), attend galas, and get placed on boards through “Forge on Boards.” It rebranded from “Fast Forward” (launched 1999) to “Forge” in 2016. Membership is free and flexible. They partner with Washburn, host “YP Day at the Capitol,” and hand out awards at their annual gala.

Sounds nice. Harmless even.

Except your half-cent sales tax dollars — the same economic-development money I helped sell in 2003 — are paying for it.

Here’s the money trail, straight from public records:

• The Joint Economic Development Organization (JEDO) was created to spend the countywide half-cent sales tax “for economic development and countywide infrastructure.”
• JEDO funnels roughly $5 million a year (sometimes more) straight to Go Topeka / Greater Topeka Partnership. That’s the same outfit that still markets Central Crossing pads as “shovel-ready” two decades later.
• In their own 2024 business plan and budget, Go Topeka lists Talent Initiatives at $212,630 under programming — right alongside salaries, marketing, and events. Forge sits squarely inside that bucket. Forge’s Executive Director (they’ve cycled through several: Kelli Maydew, Rhett Flood, and current staff listings) is a paid position under the Greater Topeka Partnership umbrella. Quarterly JEDO reports literally say “Welcome to Forge and the Greater Topeka Partnership!”
• Historical breakdowns show Go Topeka’s total expenses running $3+ million with 67%+ coming from the JEDO sales-tax grant. Leftover “economic development” money gets recycled into more programs like this instead of roads or direct deals.

That’s your money — collected at the cash register from every Topeka family buying groceries, gas, and clothes — being spent on young-professional networking nights, galas, and leadership-placement schemes.

The results? Topeka’s population is still stuck in the same 122k–127k rut it’s been in since 2000. Shawnee County barely budged. Young talent keeps leaving for bigger cities because the jobs and opportunities never materialized at the scale the 2003 pitch promised. Forge has been “forging” for 25+ years (under different names) and the tax base hasn’t exploded. The big distribution centers we landed? Great — but they were already in motion when I signed that KDOT letter in 2003. The rest of the 600-acre park is still marketing vacant dirt.

This isn’t “economic development.” This is the Chamber/Partnership running a taxpayer-subsidized social club and calling it talent strategy. It’s the same rigged loop: mayor’s office refers big deals to Go Topeka → Go Topeka decides who gets the incentives → Go Topeka runs programs like Forge with the leftover public money → repeat. No competitive bidding. No transparent deal-by-deal votes. Just insiders deciding how to spend your sales tax on events and branding while the roads stay terrible and the water bills stay high.

I was in the room in 2003 signing the letter as a developer asking for the interchange to make that park shovel-ready. I helped pitch the original quarter-cent (then half-cent) sales tax to the Kiwanis and Rotary. I’ve watched the same players rebrand the Chamber → Go Topeka → Greater Topeka Partnership and keep the cash flowing for 22 years.

Enough.

The city and county should keep the $5+ million annual economic-development slice in-house. Make every single deal — big or small — come through them on the public record. No more blank checks to the Partnership for talent galas and “initiatives.” If money is left at year-end, put it straight into the roads and infrastructure voters actually approved. Force real competition and real accountability instead of another layer of nonprofit overhead that hasn’t moved the population needle in a generation.

Forge might be a fun networking group for 18- to 40-year-olds. Fine — let private sponsors or membership dues pay for it.

Not one more dime of Shawnee County sales-tax money.

I didn’t make this up to run for mayor. I lived it as a broker and developer who’s been cleaning out the same office files for decades. The 2003 letter is still in my stack. The vacant pads at Central Crossing are still there. The same organizations are still cashing the checks.

Time to end the cesspool. Keep the money local, transparent, and results-driven — or watch another 20 years of the same slow decline.

— Henry McClure Topeka developer, taxpayer, and the guy who was there when they sold you the dream

Time to end the cesspool. Keep the money local, transparent, and results-driven — or watch another 20 years of the same slow decline.

MCRE, LLC

3625 SW 29^th Street

Topeka KS 66614

785.383.9994

Time to end the cesspool. Keep the money local, transparent, and results-driven — or watch another 20 years of the same slow decline.

 Forge: Why Topeka Taxpayers Shouldn’t Be Funding a Young Professionals Social Club with Sales-Tax Dollars

Go to gotopeka.com/forge-young-talent/ right now. You’ll see the glossy pitch: “Forge Young Talent” — a “dynamic group of young people ages 18-40” who network, serve on committees (Events, Marketing, Membership, Advocacy, IDEAS), attend galas, and get placed on boards through “Forge on Boards.” It rebranded from “Fast Forward” (launched 1999) to “Forge” in 2016. Membership is free and flexible. They partner with Washburn, host “YP Day at the Capitol,” and hand out awards at their annual gala.

Sounds nice. Harmless even.

Except your half-cent sales tax dollars — the same economic-development money I helped sell in 2003 — are paying for it.

Here’s the money trail, straight from public records:

• The Joint Economic Development Organization (JEDO) was created to spend the countywide half-cent sales tax “for economic development and countywide infrastructure.”
• JEDO funnels roughly $5 million a year (sometimes more) straight to Go Topeka / Greater Topeka Partnership. That’s the same outfit that still markets Central Crossing pads as “shovel-ready” two decades later.
• In their own 2024 business plan and budget, Go Topeka lists Talent Initiatives at $212,630 under programming — right alongside salaries, marketing, and events. Forge sits squarely inside that bucket. Forge’s Executive Director (they’ve cycled through several: Kelli Maydew, Rhett Flood, and current staff listings) is a paid position under the Greater Topeka Partnership umbrella. Quarterly JEDO reports literally say “Welcome to Forge and the Greater Topeka Partnership!”
• Historical breakdowns show Go Topeka’s total expenses running $3+ million with 67%+ coming from the JEDO sales-tax grant. Leftover “economic development” money gets recycled into more programs like this instead of roads or direct deals.

That’s your money — collected at the cash register from every Topeka family buying groceries, gas, and clothes — being spent on young-professional networking nights, galas, and leadership-placement schemes.

The results? Topeka’s population is still stuck in the same 122k–127k rut it’s been in since 2000. Shawnee County barely budged. Young talent keeps leaving for bigger cities because the jobs and opportunities never materialized at the scale the 2003 pitch promised. Forge has been “forging” for 25+ years (under different names) and the tax base hasn’t exploded. The big distribution centers we landed? Great — but they were already in motion when I signed that KDOT letter in 2003. The rest of the 600-acre park is still marketing vacant dirt.

This isn’t “economic development.” This is the Chamber/Partnership running a taxpayer-subsidized social club and calling it talent strategy. It’s the same rigged loop: mayor’s office refers big deals to Go Topeka → Go Topeka decides who gets the incentives → Go Topeka runs programs like Forge with the leftover public money → repeat. No competitive bidding. No transparent deal-by-deal votes. Just insiders deciding how to spend your sales tax on events and branding while the roads stay terrible and the water bills stay high.

I was in the room in 2003 signing the letter as a developer asking for the interchange to make that park shovel-ready. I helped pitch the original quarter-cent (then half-cent) sales tax to the Kiwanis and Rotary. I’ve watched the same players rebrand the Chamber → Go Topeka → Greater Topeka Partnership and keep the cash flowing for 22 years.

Enough.

The city and county should keep the $5+ million annual economic-development slice in-house. Make every single deal — big or small — come through them on the public record. No more blank checks to the Partnership for talent galas and “initiatives.” If money is left at year-end, put it straight into the roads and infrastructure voters actually approved. Force real competition and real accountability instead of another layer of nonprofit overhead that hasn’t moved the population needle in a generation.

Forge might be a fun networking group for 18- to 40-year-olds. Fine — let private sponsors or membership dues pay for it.

Not one more dime of Shawnee County sales-tax money.

I didn’t make this up to run for mayor. I lived it as a broker and developer who’s been cleaning out the same office files for decades. The 2003 letter is still in my stack. The vacant pads at Central Crossing are still there. The same organizations are still cashing the checks.

Time to end the cesspool. Keep the money local, transparent, and results-driven — or watch another 20 years of the same slow decline.

— Henry McClure Topeka developer, taxpayer, and the guy who was there when they sold you the dream

Rachel Wilson’s point is a pro-life demographic argument that is numerically grounded in U.S. reality:

 Yes, there is substantial truth to the core demographic claim, though with some important caveats on precision, geography, and interpretation.

The post (and Rachel Wilson’s comments on the Jack Neel Podcast) uses U.S.-specific numbers but initially labels the point “worldwide.” The figures line up with U.S. data for Generation Z (born roughly 1997–2012). Reliable estimates put the current U.S. Gen Z population at approximately 68–71 million. Total live births in the U.S. over those ~16 years averaged roughly 4 million per year, for a cohort total of around 64 million births.

During the same period, Guttmacher Institute (the more complete source, as CDC data misses some states) estimates show roughly 1.2–1.3 million abortions per year in the late 1990s, declining gradually to under 1 million by the early 2010s. That totals approximately 17–18 million abortions—exactly the ballpark Wilson cited.

• Relative to the born Gen Z cohort (~64–70 million), the aborted number represents roughly 25–28% (“almost one-third” of the generation that was born).
• As a share of total pregnancies ending in either live birth or abortion, it is about 21% (17M / (64M births + 17M abortions)).

The “one-third” phrasing is rhetorical rounding, not strict arithmetic, but it is not misleading by much—especially when using the post’s own “60 million Gen Z” shorthand. The claim does not hold numerically for the entire world with those specific figures (global Gen Z is ~2 billion; global abortions are estimated at 40–56 million per year, yielding a similar but not identical proportional impact depending on the exact years and sources). Wilson’s quote appears focused on the U.S./Western context.

Compounding demographic effects

The downstream math is directionally correct and straightforward demography. A missing cohort of ~17 million people (who, at historical fertility rates, might have produced 30–40 million children of their own) means permanently smaller future generations, a smaller tax base, fewer workers, and slower economic growth—all else equal. This is one contributor (among many) to the fertility crisis in the U.S. and other Western countries, where total fertility has been below replacement (2.1) for decades. Labor shortages in certain sectors have indeed been addressed partly through immigration. The post’s framing that “the same political class” sterilized the population then imported replacements is opinionated and conspiratorial in tone, but the observed pattern—low native birth rates coinciding with high immigration—is factual and widely discussed in demographic literature.

Counterfactuals and limitations

• “What they might have accomplished” (curing cancer, free energy, etc.) is pure speculation. We cannot know; it is a valid thought experiment about lost human potential, but not provable.
• Abortion is only one factor in lower birth rates. Others include widespread contraception, later marriage, women’s education and careers, high child-rearing costs, cultural shifts, and economics. Fertility decline in the U.S. began before Roe v. Wade (1973).
• Natural miscarriages (10–20% of known pregnancies) are not included in these calculations, nor are they equivalent to induced abortions in the argument.

Summary

Rachel Wilson’s point is a pro-life demographic argument that is numerically grounded in U.S. reality: during Gen Z’s birth window, the U.S. saw roughly 17 million abortions alongside ~64–70 million live births in that cohort. This represents a very large missing generation—on the order of one-quarter of Gen Z’s size—with real, compounding effects on population, economy, and culture. The “almost one-third” and “worldwide” phrasing are approximate or slightly overstated for emphasis, but the underlying scale (millions of potential Americans never born) is accurate and not in serious dispute. The post correctly notes that this demographic hole has contributed to labor and growth pressures that many nations fill with immigration. Whether one views this as a tragic loss of human capital, a policy trade-off, or something else is a values question; the raw numbers Wilson cites are real. Pretending the abortions never happened, as the post says, would indeed be a form of demographic denial.

Fw: KORA - CVA - email

Henry McClure

785.383.9994 

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From: Keya Downing <kdowning@Topeka.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 6, 2026 10:21:35 AM
To: Henry McClure <mcre13@gmail.com>; City Clerk <cclerk@Topeka.org>; Christina Valdivia-Alcala <cvaldivia-alcala@topeka.org>
Cc: Council Assist <Councilassist@topeka.org>
Subject: RE: KORA - CVA - email

 

Mr. McClure,

 

Your request has been received.  Megan, nor our office,  is in possession of an email you reference and a copy was not provided as a record at the 05/05/26 GB meeting.  We will process this as a KORA and you will receive a response within three business days.  Thank you

 

From: Henry McClure <mcre13@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:05 PM
To: City Clerk <cclerk@topeka.org>; Christina Valdivia-Alcala <cvaldivia-alcala@topeka.org>
Subject: KORA - CVA - email

 

Notice: -----This message was sent by an external sender-----

 

CVA mention we can KORA her email last (tonight) night at city council 

 

Megan - please send me a copy 

 

Thanks

 

MCRE, LLC

3625 SW 29^th Street

Topeka KS 66614

785.383.9994

RE: Thanks

Mr. McClure,

Thank you for your message.  This message serves as confirmation that your email has been received by the council members. 

 

Tonya L. Bailey

Sr. Executive Assistant to the City Council

City of Topeka

215 SE 7th St. Rm 211

785-368-3710

 

“The preceding email message (including any attachments) contains information that may be confidential, protected by the attorney/client or other applicable privileges or that may constitute non-public information. This message is intended to be conveyed only to the designated recipient(s). If you are not listed as a recipient of this message, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and then delete it from your system. Use, dissemination, distribution, or reproduction of this message by unintended recipients is not authorized and may be unlawful.”

From: Henry McClure <mcre13@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 11:08 PM
To: Brett Kell <bkell@topeka.org>; MCRE Media <mcre1.9999@blogger.com>; Spencer Duncan <sduncan@topeka.org>; City Clerk <cclerk@topeka.org>; Governing Body <governingbody@topeka.org>
Subject: Thanks

 

Notice: -----This message was sent by an external sender-----

 

Thanks so much for your idea to move Public Commet up - 

 

Please ask our Mayor to remove the sign-up requirement. 

 

Someday just sitting there an item inspires comment. 

 

Thanks again for your kindness  

 

MCRE, LLC

3625 SW 29^th Street

Topeka KS 66614

785.383.9994