Karma

A guest sued after claiming an Airbnb host sent a security-camera image of him with another woman to his wife.

Shawn Mackey rented a home in Memphis, Tennessee, in September 2022 for a weekend with friends.

During the stay, host Pamela Fohler accused him of breaking house rules involving additional guests.

After checking out, Mackey was charged an additional $502.46. He disputed the charge and left an unfavorable review.

According to his lawsuit, Fohler later texted him a security-camera image showing him entering the property with another woman.

She allegedly asked whether she should send the photos to his wife or whether he would.

Days later, Mackey claimed his wife received the image at her work email from an unfamiliar account.

He alleged the incident damaged his marriage and caused emotional distress.

Fohler denied creating the email account or sending the image to his wife.

Mackey sued Fohler and Airbnb in federal court in 2023.

What started as a dispute over guests and rental fees eventually became a lawsuit involving privacy, alleged extortion and a marriage.

Credit: Mississippi District Court

#fblifestyle #airbnb #airbnbhost #securitycamera #privacylaw

Henry McClure

785.383.9994 

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

Subject: You exploded over a hot dog. The banquet checks did not even raise your pulse.

Commissioner Cook:

You are a lawyer. You are an officer of the court. You sit on JEDO with a vote. That is not a hobby. That is a higher duty than the rest of the room, and you have spent years reminding people that you know the rules better than they do.

So let’s talk about the rule you applied to me.

You came at me personally over a hot dog. Electioneering, you said. A frank in a bun. Mustard. Onions. You treated that like I had stuffed the ballot box. Fine. You set the temperature. Live at that temperature.

Now apply it.

On May 6, 2024, Molly Howey sent me GO Topeka’s own list of “grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships” for 2022 and 2023. I published it. The line includes church dinners, ministry retreats, Juneteenth festivals, an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet, YWCA awards tables, Peace and Justice sponsorships, and a $10,000 night called For the Culture KS. The civic/banquet/church/festival slice that no honest person can call a factory is $93,235. The whole drawer Howey dumped those checks into totaled $861,750, because the banquet was hidden behind Choose Topeka, PTAC, Forge, and pitch prizes so JEDO would never have to say the word charity.

You are the lawyer on the board. You know K.S.A. 12-187 et seq. The purpose goes on the ballot. Special-purpose sales tax stays inside that purpose. Kansas AG Opinion 2001-014: sales-tax money may fund economic development if the electorate approved that use — not if a contractor later decides a church dinner “feels like vitality.” AG Opinion 2017-015 is your county’s own half-cent. Spending follows the ballot and the interlocal. The GO Topeka contract is tighter than both: no grant-fund spending except as specified in the annual budget JEDO approves.

A banquet table is not payroll. A ministry retreat is not a plant. A Freedom Fund banquet is not a widening of the tax base. If you can find the electioneering statute in a hot dog, you can find the purpose clause in a $2,500 banquet check. Do not tell me the statute is too hard. You have already demonstrated you can get theological about condiments.

Officer of the court means you do not sit mute while a contractor spends voter-pledged money as a customer-loyalty program. Recipients of those checks do not bite the hand. That is the point. Public money in. Political goodwill out. You are supposed to be the person in the room who says that out loud, louder than you said it to me over a frank.

I want three things from you in writing, as counsel and as a JEDO vote:

1. Yes or no: is an NAACP banquet, a church dinner, or a YWCA awards table economic development payable from the half-cent tax?
2. Will you demand GO Topeka split true deal incentives from contributions/sponsorships so the banquet never hides behind Choose Topeka again?
3. Will you use the same voice on those expenditures that you used on me about the hot dog — or was the outrage only available when the target was Henry McClure?

If a hot dog is a hanging offense, a banquet paid with other people’s sales tax is a board failure. You do not get to be the smartest lawyer in the room only when it is convenient. Read Howey’s list. Read the statute. Then get as loud as you already proved you can get.

Henry McClure
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

Subject: Sales-tax charity is not economic development — JEDO should stop pretending it is

Commissioner Cook
Councilmember Hiller

You both vote on JEDO. One of you is my county commissioner. One of you is my city councilmember. That is why this is going to both of you and not into another staff graveyard.

On May 6, 2024, Molly Howey sent me GO Topeka’s own list of what they booked as “grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships” for 2022 and 2023. I published it. It is still sitting there. Read it as JEDO voting members, not as guests at their podium.

What they called economic development included Juneteenth celebrations, church dinners and back-to-school events, an NAACP banquet, YWCA banquets and scholarships, peace-and-justice sponsorships, Alvin Ailey camp, a Brown Foundation anniversary, “For the Culture KS,” Mana De Topeka, New Mount Zion, Bring Back the Blvd, Oakland Garden, Living the Dream, Women of Excellence, Kansas Chamber conference tickets, Discovery Center kindergarten, and pitch-contest prize checks dressed up as development.

That is not a jobs program. That is a patronage list.

The half-cent sales tax is taken from people buying groceries, parts, and pizza. JEDO’s deal with GO Topeka is supposed to buy economic development: payroll, investment, sites, deals that widen the tax base. It is not a municipal United Way with a government credit card.

Kansas law does not give you the cover you think it does.

Local retailers’ sales tax is authorized by K.S.A. 12-187 et seq. Voters must approve it. The purpose goes on the ballot. KDOR’s own rule is simple: general-purpose local sales tax may be used for any lawful purpose; special-purpose sales tax may be used only for the purposes stated to the voters. JEDO’s levy was not sold as a charity pot. It was sold as economic development.

Kansas Attorney General Opinion 2001-014 says a city or county may use sales-tax proceeds for economic development if the electorate approved that use. It also says public funds must serve the public welfare, and courts defer to the governing body on that finding. That is the loophole GO Topeka lives in: call a banquet “vitality,” call a church dinner “talent,” and hope JEDO never asks the next question. The AG did not say banquet tickets are economic development. The AG said you have to own the finding. You two now own it.

Attorney General Opinion 2017-015 is even closer to home. It concerned Shawnee County’s earlier half-cent. The AG tied spending to the ballot list and the interlocal agreement. Excess after those purposes were met could fall to general funds. That opinion is not a license to bury civic donations inside an annual contractor lump and call the lump “ED.” Howey’s list is not leftover money after a bridge was built. It is the program.

Kansas is stingy the other direction. Most charities still pay sales tax on what they buy unless a specific exemption applies. 501(c)(3) status is not an automatic sales-tax holiday. So the state will tax a nonprofit when it buys tables and linens, then JEDO lets a contractor use other people’s sales tax to buy that same nonprofit a sponsorship. Tax the charity on the way in. Baptize the donation as “development” on the way out. That is not law. That is a racket with letterhead.

The contract is tighter than the statute. GO Topeka is not supposed to spend grant funds except as specified in the annual budget JEDO approves. If sponsorships were stuffed into a line called grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships, you did not approve economic development. You approved a black box.

And love is the point. Nobody who cashes a $2,500 or $10,000 “sponsorship” walks away thinking GO Topeka is a problem. They walk away thinking GO Topeka is generous. That is how you build a cheering section. That is how you get rooms that clap when the quarterly slideshow comes on. That is how you get people who will defend the machine that just wrote them a check — including the candidates that machine prefers. You do not need a smoke-filled room. The transaction is the mechanism. Public money in. Political goodwill out. Recipients do not bite the hand that funds their banquet.

If those groups are worthy, they can raise private money. If GO Topeka’s private board wants to pass the hat among its own directors, fine. What they may not do is launder a sales tax into charity and then brief JEDO as if Juneteenth catering and banquet tables are the same species as a plant expansion.

Wednesday night they spent an hour on $20,000 gymnastics equipment and a moving company’s TV ads and called it rigor. Then the public had four minutes to talk about land bought with that same tax, sitting under a data-center play, with GO Topeka holding the paper. You both sat there as voting members. You now own the contradiction.

I want three things from each of you, in writing, as my elected officials and as JEDO votes:

1. A plain statement whether you consider banquet sponsorships, church events, and cultural celebrations to be economic development payable from the half-cent tax. Yes or no. Not a paragraph about “community vitality.”
2. A demand that GO Topeka separate, forever, true deal incentives from contributions/sponsorships — and that JEDO stop approving a lump that lets them hide the second inside the first.
3. An answer on who authorized using tax-bought land and tax-funded goodwill as if they were GO Topeka’s private inventory.

Government has no moral license to tax a cashier in Topeka so a development contractor can buy affection. Kansas sales-tax law requires a purpose. The ballot stated one. The contract requires a budget. Banquet tables are not that purpose. If JEDO will not say so out loud, it is not an oversight board. It is an applause track.

I expect a reply from both of you. Not a forward to staff.

Henry McClure
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

Subject: Sales-tax charity is not economic development — JEDO should stop pretending it is

Commissioner Cook

Councilmember Hiller

You both vote on JEDO. One of you is my county commissioner. One of you is my city councilmember. That is why this is going to both of you and not into another staff graveyard.

On May 6, 2024, Molly Howey sent me GO Topeka’s own list of what they booked as “grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships” for 2022 and 2023. I published it. It is still sitting there. Read it as JEDO voting members, not as guests at their podium.

What they called economic development included Juneteenth celebrations, church dinners and back-to-school events, an NAACP banquet, YWCA banquets and scholarships, peace-and-justice sponsorships, Alvin Ailey camp, a Brown Foundation anniversary, “For the Culture KS,” Mana De Topeka, New Mount Zion, Bring Back the Blvd, Oakland Garden, Living the Dream, Women of Excellence, Kansas Chamber conference tickets, Discovery Center kindergarten, and pitch-contest prize checks dressed up as development.

That is not a jobs program. That is a patronage list.

The half-cent sales tax is taken from people buying groceries, parts, and pizza. JEDO’s deal with GO Topeka is supposed to buy economic development: payroll, investment, sites, deals that widen the tax base. It is not a municipal United Way with a government credit card.

Kansas law does not give you the cover you think it does.

Local retailers’ sales tax is authorized by K.S.A. 12-187 et seq. Voters must approve it. The purpose goes on the ballot. KDOR’s own rule is simple: general-purpose local sales tax may be used for any lawful purpose; special-purpose sales tax may be used only for the purposes stated to the voters. JEDO’s levy was not sold as a charity pot. It was sold as economic development.

Kansas Attorney General Opinion 2001-014 says a city or county may use sales-tax proceeds for economic development if the electorate approved that use. It also says public funds must serve the public welfare, and courts defer to the governing body on that finding. That is the loophole GO Topeka lives in: call a banquet “vitality,” call a church dinner “talent,” and hope JEDO never asks the next question. The AG did not say banquet tickets are economic development. The AG said you have to own the finding. You two now own it.

Attorney General Opinion 2017-015 is even closer to home. It concerned Shawnee County’s earlier half-cent. The AG tied spending to the ballot list and the interlocal agreement. Excess after those purposes were met could fall to general funds. That opinion is not a license to bury civic donations inside an annual contractor lump and call the lump “ED.” Howey’s list is not leftover money after a bridge was built. It is the program.

Kansas is stingy the other direction. Most charities still pay sales tax on what they buy unless a specific exemption applies. 501(c)(3) status is not an automatic sales-tax holiday. So the state will tax a nonprofit when it buys tables and linens, then JEDO lets a contractor use other people’s sales tax to buy that same nonprofit a sponsorship. Tax the charity on the way in. Baptize the donation as “development” on the way out. That is not law. That is a racket with letterhead.

The contract is tighter than the statute. GO Topeka is not supposed to spend grant funds except as specified in the annual budget JEDO approves. If sponsorships were stuffed into a line called grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships, you did not approve economic development. You approved a black box.

And love is the point. Nobody who cashes a $2,500 or $10,000 “sponsorship” walks away thinking GO Topeka is a problem. They walk away thinking GO Topeka is generous. That is how you build a cheering section. That is how you get rooms that clap when the quarterly slideshow comes on. That is how you get people who will defend the machine that just wrote them a check — including the candidates that machine prefers. You do not need a smoke-filled room. The transaction is the mechanism. Public money in. Political goodwill out. Recipients do not bite the hand that funds their banquet.

If those groups are worthy, they can raise private money. If GO Topeka’s private board wants to pass the hat among its own directors, fine. What they may not do is launder a sales tax into charity and then brief JEDO as if Juneteenth catering and banquet tables are the same species as a plant expansion.

Wednesday night they spent an hour on $20,000 gymnastics equipment and a moving company’s TV ads and called it rigor. Then the public had four minutes to talk about land bought with that same tax, sitting under a data-center play, with GO Topeka holding the paper. You both sat there as voting members. You now own the contradiction.

I want three things from each of you, in writing, as my elected officials and as JEDO votes:

1. A plain statement whether you consider banquet sponsorships, church events, and cultural celebrations to be economic development payable from the half-cent tax. Yes or no. Not a paragraph about “community vitality.”
2. A demand that GO Topeka separate, forever, true deal incentives from contributions/sponsorships — and that JEDO stop approving a lump that lets them hide the second inside the first.
3. An answer on who authorized using tax-bought land and tax-funded goodwill as if they were GO Topeka’s private inventory.

Government has no moral license to tax a cashier in Topeka so a development contractor can buy affection. Kansas sales-tax law requires a purpose. The ballot stated one. The contract requires a budget. Banquet tables are not that purpose. If JEDO will not say so out loud, it is not an oversight board. It is an applause track.

I expect a reply from both of you. Not a forward to staff.

Henry McClure
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

LOOK here - https://arcoconststg.wpenginepowered.com/

 The URL is a WP Engine staging site for ARCO Construction Company, not a separate firm. The live brand is arcoconstruction.com, with the national affiliate ARCO National Construction at arconational.com. Same company family, same pitch, same project library.

Who they are

ARCO is a St. Louis–based design-build general contractor founded in 1992 by Dick Arnoldy and Jeff Cook. Cook is still listed as co-founder and CEO. Year one was about $9.5 million in revenue. Today the enterprise is a national affiliate network: local offices plus a national delivery machine.

Published scale (numbers vary slightly by page and year):

Claim	Source on site / filings
Founded	1992, St. Louis
Offices	~47 nationwide (some ARCO pages say 45+ / 51 incl. Canada)
Projects completed	~7,500 design-build jobs
Cities built in	~500 U.S. cities
Annual revenue	~$5.2B–$6.5B (Forbes / company pages)
Headcount	~1,300–1,800
Repeat-customer revenue	~75%
Employees (Inc. 5000)	501–1,000 band; Forbes later ~1,300

They rank as a top warehouse/distribution design-build firm (often #1 in that niche) and a top-10 U.S. design-build GC. Inc. 5000 listed them in 2024. HQ phone on the live site: (314) 963-0715. St. Louis office: 7930 Clayton Road, 3rd Fl., Richmond Heights, MO 63117.

Core purpose on the staging homepage: make the construction process enjoyable and beneficial for associates and customers. Values they put on the site: Integrity, Responsibility, Positivity, Opportunity.

What they actually sell

Not bid-spec GC work as the default. The product is turnkey design-build:

1. Conceptual development with real cost input before you spend real design money
2. Early risk transfer once the job is awarded
3. Guaranteed upfront pricing from the design-build concept
4. Single-source responsibility (architect + builder under one contract)
5. Faster schedule because design and construction overlap

ARCO National’s version of the same pitch puts numbers on it: about 6% lower total cost, 33% faster construction, 61% faster overall delivery versus traditional design-bid-build. Treat those as marketing claims, not audited benchmarks.

For an owner or developer, the practical meaning is: they want to be in the room at feasibility, lock a number early, and own the drawing set. That is why they push warehouse parks, senior living prototypes, and repeat national accounts.

What they build

The staging site organizes work by product line, not by city:

• Warehouse / distribution — core franchise. Spec and build-to-suit tilt-up, cross-docks, 32-ft clear, ESFR, big electrical. Examples: Five Below 860,000 SF (Buckeye, AZ), Whirlpool 800,000 SF (Tulsa), Lenexa Logistics Centre (multiple buildings, 3.8M+ SF with Block Real Estate Services).
• Senior living — assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing, CCRCs. Long relationships with StoryPoint / Provision Living (15-year mark on the blog). ARCO National cites ~75 senior projects, ~12,000 units, 15M+ SF.
• Multifamily — garden, mid-rise, mixed-use, some affordable. NEO Vantage Point (269 units, Maryland Heights), The Rail (268 units, St. Louis), Via (Springdale, AR), Citrine (Lake St. Louis).
• Manufacturing / process — beverage (Premium Waters, AriZona), packaging (Elopak), aerospace components, truck assembly.
• Cold storage / food — Cypress Cold Storage (Springdale), Fare Foods (Du Quoin, IL), PFG and Mies Family Foods in the KC metro.
• Specialty / entertainment — Live Nation Morton Amphitheater (16,000 seats, Riverside, MO), WOW! Entertainment (Fenton).
• Commercial, self-storage, cannabis/CEA, data-center-adjacent industrial, medical office, childcare.

Featured on the staging homepage: Sossaman Business Campus (Mesa, AZ; they tout $1.8M+ in VE savings), Live Nation amphitheater, Premium Waters, senior-living portfolio, Via mixed-use.

Midwest and Kansas footprint

No Topeka office. They do have a Kansas City division and a long KS/MO industrial list.

KC office listings appear as 5450 NW 40th Street, Riverside, MO 64150 and 5015 NW Canal Street (addresses have moved as the division grew). They built their own ~52,000 SF KC office/warehouse with BlueScope — gym, training room, even an NBA-size court — and won a 2025 KC Business Journal Capstone Award for it.

Kansas-side work that shows up on ARCO National’s KC project list:

• Lenexa Logistics Centre — 10-building industrial park; ARCO has delivered multiple buildings including South 6 (~199,000 SF) and claims 3.8M+ SF in that park with Block RES
• MSI Surfaces — 200,000 SF, Lenexa
• Faith Technologies — 438,000 SF manufacturing, Olathe
• KCAS Bioanalytical — ~68,000 SF lab/office, Olathe
• Grundfos — Class A office, Lenexa
• Standard Beverage — 117,880 SF expansion, Lawrence
• General Motors — 843,000 SF component/distribution, Kansas City, Kansas
• Mies Family Foods — 80,000 SF cold storage, Kansas City, Kansas
• Mission Road MOB — 22,000 SF, KCK

Missouri side of the same office: Live Nation amphitheater (Riverside), Premium Waters (Riverside), ColdPoint Logistics (~620,000 SF freezer/cooler, KCMO), Anthology of the Plaza senior living (adaptive reuse, KCMO).

So in this market they show up as a national design-build GC with a real KC industrial bench, not a Topeka local. For Shawnee County work they would typically run out of the KC office.

What the staging site is doing

arcoconststg.wpenginepowered.com is a redesign / content refresh of the marketing site:

• Hero: “A Better Construction Experience Begins with ARCO”
• Heavy project grid + industry filters
• Blog mixed of case studies, groundbreakings, and “how design-build works” explainers
• Thin contact page on staging (St. Louis, Phoenix, Northwest Arkansas phones only); the live site has the full office directory
• Almost no team bios on the staging homepage; leadership lives on the live About page (Cook, Hank Bellina as president, several VPs)

Content strategy is sales enablement: prove they already built your building type, in your region, for a repeat client.

How to read them as a counterpart

Strengths: national buying power, early price, warehouse/senior/multifamily repetition, KC industrial track record, single-source contract that developers like when lenders want a number.

Limits / watch-outs: affiliate model means the local team matters as much as the brand; no dedicated Topeka presence; founding-year noise on third-party databases (some list 1922 — that is a different or merged lineage; ARCO’s own story is 1992); cost/schedule “percent faster” claims are marketing.

If you were calling them: start with the Kansas City division or St. Louis HQ at (314) 963-0715, and treat this staging URL as a draft of the same brochure you will see on the live site.