Nick Palczynski loved growing up in Bettendorf with his brother and sister.
After graduating from St. Ambrose and a career that took him to three major cities over 10 years, the 36-year-old married father of three boomeranged back to Bettendorf in fall 2021 and is the newest member of the City Council.
Palczynski filled the vacancy left by former Ald. Scott Webster, who was elected to the State Senate in November 2022.
“I am humbled and honored to be selected as the next Council Member of the 5th Ward,” said Palczynski. “I have a lot to learn and I am eager to represent my constituents. The city of Bettendorf is a great place to raise a family and I look forward to making a meaningful contribution to the growth of our community.”
During a recent special meeting, City Council members heard presentations from three applicants: Beth Aronson, Austin Blunk, and Palczynski. During his presentation, Palczynski noted he was born and raised in Bettendorf and more than a year ago, returned to the city with his wife Jessica and three childrren.
“During the past four years, I have built sales organizations for companies that are on the leading edge of technology – specifically focused on computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence,” he told City Council. “My family and I have had the opportunity to live in many different communities, which has afforded me an opportunity to see how other communities operate. These unique experiences allow me to bring a new perspective to the city of Bettendorf while leveraging the skills I have developed in my personal and professional career.”
“We really appreciate Beth, Austin, and Nick’s interest in this position,” said Mayor Bob Gallagher. “All three – as two business owners and somebody with experience in business, raising their families here and doing the work that they’ve done here – make them incredible contributors to the city.”
Palczynski was sworn in by Mayor Gallagher to the City Council on Monday, Feb. 6.
Coming from Chicago
He moved with his wife and three kids in October 2021, from Geneva, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Palczynski first moved to Georgia in 2010 (with the Muscatine-based HON Company), lived 10 months there, and spent five years in Washington, D.C. He and Jessica met at St. Ambrose, where he earned his bachelor’s in marketing, management and organizational leadership in 2009.
In D.C., Palczynski was still with HON, had their first child there, a boy, Egan (who will be 9 in April), then was transferred back to Atlanta.
They built a new house there, while Jessica was pregnant with their second (Maxine, who’s now 7). “Everything’s great, we’re loving it down there, but we need to get closer to family,” Palczynski said recently, noting Jessica is from Bloomington, Ill.
“Within HNI, outside of HON, there was opportunity in the Chicago area,” he said of HON’s parent company. They moved there in 2016, in the Fox Valley, where his paternal grandmother lived.
“We spent two and a half good years with her before she passed,” he said. “It was awesome. We ended up having our third child in the beginning of ’17,” another girl, Lucille (now 5).
Palczynski now works as director of strategic partnerships for the Chicago-based company OneTrack. It bills itself as building the most advanced AI-powered warehouse operating system in the world combining deep learning, computer vision, and low-cost edge sensors.
Working in artificial intelligence
Before OneTrack, he worked two years for FARMWAVE as chief sales and marketing officer, focused on image recognition and artificial intelligence in the agricultural technology industry.
OneTrack helps companies see everything that’s happening in their warehouse, Palczynski said. Cameras are trained to recognize specific environments and events, and improve their safety and operations.
“There’s a lot of damages that are caused by general operations,” he said. “We bring in camera sensors an put them on forklifts and yard trucks, stationary in the ceiling and we identify the different safety events that are taking place.”
OneTrack presents all the information back to the customer and coaches behavior change.
“They now have accountability,” Palczynski said. “They can watch the video. It gives the operators the accountability they’ve never had before.”
OneTrack automates the entire coaching process, he said. They identify areas of improvement. “It’s helping them to be safer, more productive, improve the quality while doing it.”
His company works worldwide for a wide variety of industries – third-party logistics, shippers, retailers, and manufacturers. “We’re really rocking and rolling; it’s cool,” Palczynski said, noting he was hired in September 2021.
“We’re a very efficient company – the founder is German,” he said. Like his jobs over the past 14 years, Palczynski works remotely. “Zoom calls are nothing new to me,” he said.
Back to Bettendorf
One of the main reasons Palczynski decided to come back to Bettendorf was after his grandmother died in 2019.
“Let’s go be with most of our family,” he said. “Being that Jess and I met at St. Ambrose, we have a love for the Quad Cities. My parents are still here, obviously. We really love being here. I got involved back in church, in Boy Scouts with my son.”
The opportunity presented itself with the City Council, Palczynski met Scott Webster and they got to chatting.
“He asked me if I had any interest, before he was going to be running for Senate,” he said of Webster. After he actually won, Palczynski took it more seriously and decided to go for it.
He is filling the last part of Webster’s four-year term, and will run for re-election in November 2023. Palczynski’s father, Ray, is a retired Davenport firefighter who directs the Illinois Fire Service Institute’s Special Operations Training Program.
“It’s a neat opportunity to see how this whole process works,” Nick said of serving as a council member. “I approached this with the intention to run again in the fall. It’s been pretty wild – it’s been a whirlwind these last couple months here.”
An incredible community
Palczynski said the close sense of community in the Quad Cities is unlike any other place he’s lived.
“We’ve lived a lot of places – D.C. was very transient. Georgia was also very transient, a lot of people in and out for work,” he said. “Chicago was great; you had that more Midwest feel to it. But big city, a lot of people moving in and out. We just sort of missed this.”
Illinois and Chicago took a very different approach (than Iowa) when COVID happened in 2020, and locked down everything, Palczynski said.
“We were locked at home for five months; it was crazy,” he said. “We liked the idea of the education system in Iowa. It was a whole number of things.”
Palczynski loves the affordability and variety of family-friendly activities there are in the QC, like the Storm and River Bandits games.
“There’s so much going on; if you want to be bored, you choose to be bored,” he said. “There’s a ton of stuff. That’s the thing, when we came back, you see the parades, the community events, it’s just so much fun. It’s awesome to be back.”
The City Council meets the first and third Tuesdays of the month. The Committee of the Whole meets the day before.
“I’m drinking from the fire hose, meeting all the department heads, trying to get my feet underneath me in what’s going on in the city,” Palczynski said.
His kids are very involved in sports and they love the facilities at TBK Sports Complex on Bettendorf’s north side.
“It just adds an incredible aspect to the community that wasn’t here when we were growing up,” Palczynski said. “The kids are doing sports at the Y, but they’re also doing TBK stuff. The facilities are just insane.”
“It’s been really neat to see,” he said. “I don’t know that I appreciated it fully, is just the growth of the Quad Cities, especially on the Iowa side. It’s just, holy cow. It’s incredible the new businesses, the new construction, homes that are coming up. It’s pretty neat to be part of, just in the community itself.”
Shortly after his family moved back, the new I-74 bridge fully opened to traffic, and the new pedestrian path last spring.
“It is beautiful,” Palczynski marveled. “My mom’s mother, who lives here, would send us the live videos as it was going up. She loved going down there and taking pictures. She was sort of our conduit to the development.”
“It’s so cool, how it’s lit up,” he said of the billion-dollar bridge. “We have walked it. My kids were just blown away by that.”
In addition to raising their kids, Jessica works part-time as a substitute teacher in the Pleasant Valley school district. They live in Bettendorf’s Surrey Heights neighborhood, near the Middle Road fire station, and their kids go to Pleasant View.
“My parents are a huge help to us,” Palczynski said, noting his in-laws in Bloomington are also just two hours away.
