This one stings because it’s so blatant: they’re literally using public economic-development funds to groom the next generation of insiders.

 Forge on Boards: How Your Half-Cent Sales Tax Is Now Paying to Stack Nonprofit and Corporate Boards with Hand-Picked Young Professionals

In August 2024, the Greater Topeka Partnership’s young professionals arm — Forge Young Talent — proudly announced “Forge on Boards.” The goal, according to their press release:

“Facilitating connections between young professionals and businesses to encourage impactful board service… connecting them with area businesses and nonprofit organizations looking to benefit from their dynamic input.”

Rhett Flood, Forge’s Executive Director, said young pros have “the energy, creativity, and drive” to bring change. Matt Pivarnik, CEO of the Greater Topeka Partnership, added that it will “shape the future of our community.”

Sounds wholesome. Leadership development. Fresh perspectives. Who could object?

Except it’s being funded, in part, by the same JEDO half-cent sales tax you and I helped pitch back in 2003.

The Money Trail (Public Records)

• Forge sits inside Talent Initiatives at Go Topeka / Greater Topeka Partnership.
• In the 2024 GO Topeka Business Plan & Budget submitted to JEDO, Talent Initiatives was budgeted at $212,630 — part of the multi-million-dollar annual grant from the countywide half-cent economic development sales tax.
• Overall, Go Topeka / Partnership gets the lion’s share of JEDO funds (historically 60-70%+ of their operating budget comes from this taxpayer pot). That’s the same stream that was supposed to make Central Crossing shovel-ready and grow Topeka’s population and tax base.
• Forge has its own sponsorship packages (benefactors pay for gala exposure and access to 2,000+ members), but the core staffing, operations, events, and now “Forge on Boards” matchmaking run on public economic-development dollars.

This isn’t private philanthropy. It’s taxpayer money collected at every cash register in Shawnee County being used to play matchmaker between 18–40-year-olds and local boards.

What Forge on Boards Actually Does

• Collects forms from young professionals who want board seats.
• Collects forms from businesses/nonprofits that want “fresh perspectives.”
• Connects them. Hosts panels. Builds the pipeline.
• Ties into their broader advocacy, Hire Local campaign with Washburn, YP Day at the Capitol, galas, committees (Events, Marketing, Advocacy, IDEAS), and leadership placement.

In other words: a taxpayer-subsidized networking and placement service that helps select young professionals get onto the very boards and organizations that influence policy, spending, and development decisions in Topeka.

Meanwhile, the big-picture results after 25+ years of Forge (originally Fast Forward in 1999) and $125+ million in JEDO/GO Topeka spending:

• Topeka population still flat ~122k–127k.
• Large swaths of the Commerce Park you helped push in that 2003 KDOT letter still vacant or “shovel-ready” in 2026 marketing materials.
• Talent keeps leaving for places with actual job growth and lower costs.

The Rigged Loop, Exhibit #47

This is the same closed system you’ve been calling out:

1. Mayor/county refers big deals and talent issues to the Partnership.
2. Partnership/Go Topeka gets the sales-tax grant to “solve” it.
3. They create programs like Forge → Forge on Boards → Choose Topeka incentives → galas → awards.
4. Insiders and connected young pros get the fast track to influence.
5. Repeat. Rebrand. Request more funding.

You were in the room signing the original letter as a developer. You sold the tax to service clubs so land could be developed and jobs created. Instead, we got a self-perpetuating nonprofit economic-development complex that now spends part of your sales tax teaching young professionals how to sit on the boards that oversee the complex.

This is not economic development. This is commercial real estate, chamber politics, and social club activity dressed up as “talent strategy” — all on the public dime.

The Fix Remains the Same

Pull the $5+ million annual economic-development allocation back in-house at the city and county. Force every deal, every incentive, every “initiative” onto the public record for vote-by-vote approval. If money is left at year-end, spend it on roads and infrastructure — not another Forge gala or board-placement program. Let private sponsors and membership dues fund networking groups. Taxpayers already pay enough for failing results.

I didn’t invent this critique in a campaign speech. The 2003 letter with my signature as “Henry McClure, Developer” is still in my files. The vacant pads at Central Crossing are still there. The rebranded organizations are still cashing the checks.

Forge on Boards is just the latest chapter in a 22-year story of good intentions, taxpayer money, and zero transformation.

Not one more dime.

— Henry McClure

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 

Sent from my T-Mobile 5G Device
Get Outlook for Android

---

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