00:00:01,930	Welcome to These Are Your Neighbors, a podcast hosted by the City of Bismarck's Human Relations Committee and produced by Dakota media access. The purpose of the podcast is to celebrate changemakers in Bismarck, whose contributions break barriers, build connections, and redefine what is possible for our community.

00:00:24,070	Our guest today is Greg Zenker. Welcome, Greg. Hello. So what do you want your neighbors to know about you? Oh, neighbors know about me. Well, it depends what perspective you're looking, right? I care, you know, I like to. I'm not a real chatty person by any means.

00:00:45,670	I'm kind of quiet until you give me the right group of people, and then I'm a little different. You like to have a little bit of fun, but I'm a go getter. I don't. If you see me, I don't wave. It's not because I didn't see your wave.

00:00:59,070	I probably got 30 or 40 things going on in my mind that I do or try to accomplish in a day or a task or whatever that is, but pretty easy going. Don't get too excited. And just live one day at a time. So why do you call Bismarck home? I was born and raised here. My mom and dad met.

00:01:16,030	My mom was a graduate of Saint Mary's High School. My dad's a Bismarck grad, and they met. And we never we never moved. I've had opportunities to leave through some job ventures and stuff like that, but I've always. It's classic, right? It's Bismarck, it's not a big city.

00:01:32,270	It's a little city, but it wants to have that big feel to it. And, you know, a lot of people just by being in certain places. But I love Bismarck. It's great. It's a great place to grow family and and live. So what's your favorite thing about Bismarck? I think it's the the genuine.

00:01:50,000	The people are very genuine. There's not a if you want an opinion, you're going to get it whether you maybe asked for it or not. I think that's kind of the way I am, too. You can you can ask, but brace yourself. You know, type thing and we care.

00:02:06,570	There's when I was on the city commission, it was about people who called me because they cared about their city. So. So even when you were younger, like, did you ever grow up thinking like, oh, I'm gonna I'm going to get out of Bismarck? And then it just never happened. Oh. Yeah, I don't I don't think so.

00:02:23,530	I never had ambitions to leave Bismarck. I did it at one time. I was going to go to new for school. I didn't work out. I went to the University of Mary instead. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. My wife said Marauder, too. So it's good. It's it's good. Now, our children are a little bit different.

00:02:39,600	My oldest son went to Moorhead State. My oldest daughter did some different things. She went to Jamestown, some Finland stuff abroad. But they're all home. They're all in North Dakota. You know, on our second or third son is working for me at Northern Plains. So cool. So your background has experience in mechanical contracting? Yep.

00:03:02,430	For our viewers who don't know what that is, what is it? Well, it's basically plumbing and heating. Okay. You know, it's got a flush. Cool air. The last 20, 25 days, everybody worries about air conditioning. Yeah, I talk about air conditioning heating every day.

00:03:19,830	So one means you want to go into that field of all the fields you can go into, as well as what made you want to go into construction. So there's something new. I mean, construction is different and and we don't really have trophies, so to speak. I'm a sports guy and we don't give participation ribbons either.

00:03:39,530	You go buy some of the buildings that we've done from Northern Plains in my previous days, that at a company. That's that's kind of our trophy. You can drive down a street and say, hey, back in the day when I was in apprentice plumber and, and there's a row of houses on a street and we did all the undergrounds, we plumbed those things.

00:03:57,470	It's like, no, I was, I was part of building something, if that makes sense. Yes. Yeah. I think that's it's kind of cool. I can't remember what I just saw, but I saw something that I'd contributed to, and I was like, oh, man. Like, I was a part of that.

00:04:12,730	And so, like to get to see that it is a pretty, pretty cool feeling. I used to have a friend who build retain walls, and when we drive by a house where he built the routine wall, that's my retaining wall. I'm like, oh, good for you. Yeah, mine was just helping design a military ribbon.

00:04:25,700	So nothing like actual going like complex. That involved manual labor by any means. But, so then what were some of the roles that you held earlier in your career? Well, my very first thing I was, I was apprentice plumber. It kind of worked out.

00:04:45,530	My, my dad and Michael Marbach at the time we're talking, he goes, hey, what's what? I was called GTE at the time. You know, my father's name is Greg as well. So I needed something to differentiate the two. They said, hey, what's he doing? He goes, well, nothing really. Send him to the shop.

00:05:01,070	So the next day I had a job putting toilets together and plumbing and digging trenches and, you know, so I've learned a lot of things that way. And, and it was intriguing. I actually have a degree in education and business minor from the University of Mary. The education piece didn't quite work out. There was I wanted a specific job, didn't get it.

00:05:20,930	Mr. Marbach said, hey, why don't you come work for me? And it just entailed, I mean, apprentice plumber. I was a commercial estimator installer, and the commercial estimating side of it really took off. Those are bigger jobs like BSC Polytech or Athletic Complex or, you know, those types of things that are engineered and architecturally done.

00:05:43,170	And I really like the commercial side of it because it's big. It was big in a short little guy, but kind of one of those things. And they're fun to do because they're different, you know? And that's where I tailored myself too.

00:06:00,630	I think with like when you're talking about apprentice plumbing and stuff like that up in the Devils Lake in the National Guard, we have some of our plumbers and then electricians. They do training like the combination wide there for the National Guard, of course, but it's really cool just to hear about just how when you learn those skill sets early on, how it sets you up for all these opportunities, just,

00:06:19,200	I mean, and even they're there for a National Guard position, the opportunities it opens up civilian wide to is is pretty incredible to get those opportunities younger. Yeah. We tell everybody when they come to apply for us, work for us. We just don't do HVAC.

00:06:36,270	We do all kinds of things because we got to run drain lines for condensate. We've got a wire zone panels. We got to get air to and from places, refrigeration, piping, those types of things. So we kind of do it all under our little scope of work that we have. And there is it's endless. The opportunities are endless, especially with data centers coming.

00:06:55,000	Yeah, yeah, I've got a lot of questions on that. So construction is a huge field. And you had stated in your bio that that was part of the things that you worked on.

00:07:13,170	Can you talk about to us what types of construction you were involved in or have been involved in? So I always tell people that us in Northern Plains were unique. We do everything from a four inch dryer vent to the. When I first started Northern Plains, we rebuilt the Holy Spirit's at the cathedral.

00:07:36,600	You know, the painted the and built the stuff on the back side, big buildings, foundations on up, talking about certain things with structural steel, those types of things that you got to, you got to work with. So yeah. So for people like, again, maybe not us, but, you know, people listening who don't know much about construction, just what are, I guess, some misconceptions or really things that you would even want to encourage people to like, look into it professionally. Oh, absolutely.

00:07:58,630	The trades are the trade. There's such demand for people in trades and it doesn't matter male or female, right? Currently we don't have any female HVAC technicians, but there's female electricians, female plumbers, females working at glass companies, concrete. There's there's just there's so many things that go into it. Right. Everybody sees the finished product of a building.

00:08:23,000	You see the sheetrock, the lights. A lot of stuff that we do is behind all of that piping for the air conditioning, piping for the plumbing, electrical lines, wires to make sure that everything works the way it's supposed to.

00:08:44,630	Total building automation systems where someone can look at graphics on a on a computer and decide what an air handler is doing or a furnace is doing. Is it is it is it discharging the 66 degree air like it's supposed to and the reheat coils are working? I mean, so there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. You know.

00:09:00,600	One thing you mentioned was being a commercial estimator is that kind of where can you just talk a little bit about that, like that specific role? Sure. So I mean, I start off with a with a plan or sometimes it's a napkin. Depends on what the project is.

00:09:17,070	We got to either design how much, what the square footage of the building is or what some people might refer to as a footprint. Find out what the customer wants from an individual control system. Or is it a large space where you just need a couple of thermostats and and it and it turns and burns, so to speak.

00:09:33,330	Quality of air quality is interesting because people don't want to put a lot of money into HVAC systems, but they want the most control out of that as possible, right? I look at the two of you. You got a jean jacket out, you got a sweater on.

00:09:48,570	And I bet that's because the places that you work, maybe it's a little too chilly. Those types of things. Your house is a little bit too chilly. Certain areas of it are a little bit. So we just try to create an environment where we can get. We can warm that up with, with hot water and reheat coils to make it more individualized.

00:10:04,070	Or in your house, maybe you got more than one, 1 or 2 zones in it. So the basement and the upper level are different and you can do different things. But but it's I'll pick the last project that I had when we did the center at BSE.

00:10:22,870	I mean, up in the attic in the joy space that nobody sees because it's painted is 48 inch round spiral. So you got it. You got a scissor lift that's up there. You got to tell a handle with a basket that's up there trying to maneuver to put those things in the in the joy space so they fit.

00:10:36,930	And and you got to have a good group of guys to be able to do that. Our biggest asset at Northern Plains is our is our people. Just because without those people we can't do those jobs. And yeah, it's I mean it's fun. I get I get excited about it.

00:10:51,470	I kind of talk over some people's heads because I use all my jargon and don't explain it real well. But that's that's what I live every day, you know. So so there are a lot of trade schools in North Dakota or where do people go to go trade school, learn.

00:11:05,100	You can just come to us, you know, every trade is going to do some of the job training. BSE has a good program, walked in, has a good program. From a plumbing mechanical standpoint, I don't know. I'm sure there's electrical ones. I just don't know them off the top of my head.

00:11:23,270	We work well with BSE, we've gotten employees from them and then we've also trained our people as to what we want them to do or need them to do. Do you notice the oh, the career career Academy? Do they do anything with like plumbing or. They sure do. Yeah, yeah. The public schools. Yeah. My son took classes there at the Career Academy last year.

00:11:41,630	Applied mechanics or something. They did everything from plumbing to electrical to rebuilding motors to woodworking. So they do a very good job and they get a good taste of different not all the trades, but what some of the other trades are that are out there.

00:12:00,270	I said on a scholarship board about probably, oh gosh, 12 years ago now, who probably longer. And it's incredible because then like, we didn't even really have scholarships for trade schools and now I'm not a part of it anymore. But by the time I was leaving, they were becoming more of a conversation.

00:12:17,030	It's really incredible to see how people value trade schools a lot more now than they used to. What are some of the biggest changes in your field that you've seen in the years? Oh, technology by far. Absolutely. I mean, back in the day, right.

00:12:35,700	My my parents had a 80% furnace, which 80% means you put a dollar in, you get 80% of the energy back out of it. It was just a thermocouple or a gas valve, you old pilot light standing there, you know that doesn't. Now it's all electronic ignition furnaces can ramp up and ramp down, variable speeds on things, inverter technology on compressors so they can ramp up and ramp down.

00:12:54,730	So yeah, technology is huge. I mean, we we set up we set up furnaces nowadays with a phone, click a QR code, make some adjustments to it and go. You know, back in the day there was dip switches or, or if you go farther back, it's a pulley and a belt, you know, to try to do it.

00:13:11,870	Has AI impacted and positively or. I'm not asking I mean just has AI impacted the industry at all? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, one reason AI is, is because consumers have more knowledge at their fingertips, right? AI helps us because we get some of those technology pieces into those furnaces or air conditioners or others, those types of things.

00:13:36,470	But at the end of the day, a robot will never replace an AC technician because somebody always have to manually do something to change a configuration or change a setting. So what made you decide to go into a leadership role and become a partner in Northern Plains? It was the next step.

00:14:00,370	I was fortunate the the Keith Benz, the person that two of us bought out, it was his opportunity to kind of start slowing down. But Keith really doesn't slow down if you know Keith. Yeah. That was that's the next goal. Northern Plains is a family orientated business.

00:14:21,230	We really we cherish our employees and we want them to if they have a kindergarten graduation, they need to be at or something. Hey, just tell us. Take a personal vehicle to the job site, go to that thing, make it happen. You know, back in the day, that wasn't kind of the the mentality of some companies. You're either at work, you don't get paid those types of things.

00:14:37,970	So I think to be able to keep it a family business, it still has to be owned by somebody who cares about family. So yeah, I think that is under valued in a lot of companies. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to switch gears here a little bit and talk to something maybe we understand a little bit.

00:14:56,670	More but. Not a little a lot more a lot more. I don't know unless we start diving into like his portfolios and it'll just be. But what made you decide to run for local office? Well, it was in 2016.

00:15:18,070	I was the president of the Bismarck Band at Home Builders Association, and we were having a little you know, we always have a tug of war between city and and those types of things and builders and codes that and I always thought about it. My father was the the mayor of Turtle Lake.

00:15:37,170	So I got a little bit of history, you know, and, and it's a part of my, my mother and father instilled in me that, hey, you got to make sure you give back to your community, whether you get back to your church or to your kids or, or that kind of thing. So it's an opportunity to give back. And the right group of people were saying, hey, Greg, you got to do this.

00:15:50,170	You got to do this, you got to do this and had to have a quick conversation with my wife, who reluctantly agreed type thing. I don't think she understood how much time that was going to take, but yeah, that's what it was.

00:16:04,070	I didn't didn't have an ax to grind, wasn't out there to be vengeful or anything like that. It was just an opportunity to make things hopefully better. Yeah. Did you understand? Like, did you know what you were getting into time commitment wise? You just said your wife probably didn't, but no.

00:16:20,030	No, I knew it was going to take some time, but not not the amount of time that that I thought I would take. And I'm a hands on kind of guy. I'm a I'm a quadruple a personality. I always tell everybody. So I like to control certain situations. Right. If that situation is not being controlled enough, then I step in and do that.

00:16:37,670	My portfolios, I had great staff. I mean, Gabe Shell, I had him for eight years and the dude's fantastic. You know, him and I would bounce ideas off each other even if it was wasn't just work related, it was, hey. How do you do this? Or, you know, that type of thing.

00:16:52,600	So yeah. And Gabe's the city engineer, correct? Yes, yes, yes. So did you talk to anyone else who had been a city commissioner or had been in public office at all before you decided to run? No, the only the. I knew a couple of people in my circle that were part of the state.

00:17:11,900	Steve Marquart was an engineer. I was not an injury. He was a commissioner at the time, and he was working with us at the Home Builders Association on a few things. So I knew him. I had a lunch with him and said, hey, what do you think? And he's like, yep, yep, you know, type thing.

00:17:28,200	So, and I knew, like I said, a couple of state people. So yeah, yeah. What were some of the things that you learned during your campaign or campaigns because you had. Several campaigns? My opinion in my perspective is not always the correct one. So I need to be able to listen and and try to formulate cohesive idea.

00:17:52,130	And there are times we just had to agree to disagree as to how, you know, certain things were going to happen, but were decisions were going to be made. I was always a pro. I not say always, I am a pro build kind of guy.

00:18:08,600	We just had to make sure that we had the right zoning and the right parts of the city. So those buildings are construction or whatever could happen, could happen and be beneficial. Maybe not for everybody, but for a majority. How many different mayors were you under then? Three? No, two. Two. Okay, back in my first term in Schmidt's my second term. Sorry about that. Oh, I had a question.

00:18:32,900	It was a good one, too. It was. So then what? Like, how is it balancing? Kind of maybe your own opinion with what maybe is, you know, probably needed for the better, the broader community? I would say with self-education. Right. I mean, let's pick roundabouts.

00:18:55,200	There are never any roundabouts in this city until we did the second leg of 43rd Avenue. And when you look at that, we could have tried to put traffic signals at the bottom of the hill from two different, you know, when you look at it, it's kind of a bowl type thing.

00:19:11,700	And I was like, yeah, you sure? But as I did more research into it, understand how traffic was going to flow, it made it made a lot of practical sense. And then the roundabout 43rd and 26th. Right. So if you don't have some type of traffic control there from that roundabout to Centennial, it's a drag strip wide open.

00:19:30,200	You know, it just natural tendencies of people is, hey, if I can go from A to B as quick as possible, I'm going to do that. So that's, that's that's also the two first roundabouts. And those are the two main reasons. One was the practicality of 19th and 43rd.

00:19:46,400	And the second one was a traffic control at at 26th and 43rd. I honestly like I fully understood the 19th and 40 or 40, 43rd, 42nd. 43, 43, 40. Third, but that the 26th one I've always been like, is there like where? Why? So that makes sense. I just learned something.

00:20:04,800	And when you're a guy who's on a person who's on the commission and you get complaints about speeding and we I've said this more than once that the city way too many people speed within the city. Right. So you got to come up with those ideas or something constructive to do that you were never going to put a traffic signal there.

00:20:19,400	It didn't meet the merits to build that. I take 19th to 43rd every day to work and I was anti roundabouts. Now I love. Them, both of them. So yeah, I like roundabouts unless I'm in a Humvee trying to take a roundabout. But with that you can go over. Yeah I. I know. That personally personally.

00:20:41,570	School busses. Do that before. So what was the biggest difference in how you ran your first and second campaigns? My first one was about getting someone. You had to know me, right? Even though we said earlier in the conversation, you kind of know everybody in Bismarck. And it's people are very cordial.

00:20:59,970	Well, you had to I had to build trust in enough people to to vote for me to be able to be a leader in the city. And that's not easy, right? With different perspective, different ideas. The second time it was just about reassurance, like, hey, I'm going to do the same thing I did the previous four years.

00:21:18,230	If you liked it, I'm okay. If I if you didn't, I'm probably out the type thing, you know. So this is a soapbox and I'm sure she'll get on it with me, but sure.

00:21:41,870	Why is local government starting at our commission or our city levels? Why is it so important? Oh well, here's the I like local government because it's the purest form of government. When we talk about a topic, it is that topic. And till you get to like a budget, when you got to talk about all the budgets within the city, right? So it's a purist, one you don't have. Let's use roundabouts because you seem to come back to that.

00:22:00,500	We're not going to talk about roundabouts. And then a green space in South Bismarck or anything like that. We're only going to talk about that section of that street for that solution. I think when you get to the state level, some of those things get mumbled, jumbled together.

00:22:18,130	And absolutely at the federal level, it's a it's a it's worse than Charlotte's Web. How was that? Yeah. I think we both are on the soapbox that people should go vote specifically for a local government because it impacts you the most, and people don't see that.

00:22:37,000	Oh, yeah, it does, because that's, you know, we complain about property taxes and those types of things, but that's your real your expenses on a daily basis are all local. You're going to have some federal stuff, the federal income tax and some other things like that or whatever new nuances out there that changes from a guideline. But most of your dollars are spent locally. Yeah.

00:22:56,400	Can you tell us then what your biggest takeaway was from being on the city commission?

00:23:01,070	It is biggest takeaway. You have to work with a lot of people. It's not 6 or 7 of us, you know, or five of us at the table. Make it a decision. It's a lot of input from from different people's perspective depending on the topic.

00:23:21,800	It could and it could influence the county, the schools, parks, especially locally real controlled and then state and federal, you know, having having city engineering as a portfolio for eight years. There were many times I was having conversations with local legislators to get certain funding packages or see what's coming, what's their ideas, what's what state DOT's ideas for an interchange at 66 type thing,

00:23:45,200	and then sometimes under a bigger flood project, you know, we had to get FEMA granted us money, but you're having conversations with maybe not necessarily with with Senator Hoeven or Senator Cramer, Representative Fedorchak. It would have been Kelly Armstrong at the time to. But they're they're people, right.

00:24:04,730	Because they got a big network of people to work with. So there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. And it tested my patience because I'm not a real patient guy. When you own a business, I can make decisions today at a snap of a hat. If I if it's a wrong decision, I'll live with it.

00:24:20,330	But I can change directions. Government takes a long time to get to a decision, and if you change directions, it takes a big group to get that thing to move. You know. Was being involved in city government what you expected? Yeah. I got out of it more than I thought I would.

00:24:41,300	First of all, when you meet people and you can and you can network with people and it's good because you learn more things. But yeah, I would say probably 10% of my time was, was like, I don't know if I'll. Ever. Do. This again. Covid was one that was brutal. That was tough.

00:25:01,970	It seemed like whatever decision you made, it was wrong. You know? And with some of the stuff that's coming out nowadays, it's just like I shake my head and I'm like, I just sit at a table for a long time. One night I got a memory out of it. It's one of the things.

00:25:16,400	But yeah. So yeah. What do you think your biggest accomplishment is as a city commissioner, when you were on the board? I think the there's two one is the first time that half cent sales tax passed on those arterial roads. And to tie to that is that it passed again.

00:25:37,030	So so it was kind of a push to get it done. It worked. We reinvested a lot of money real quickly to to make it work. We and the citizens voted to extend it, which is which at like 67%. So that means that they approved what we were doing and how we were doing it.

00:25:57,030	And then I think the the difference we do with traffic, some of the I learned a lot of stuff with that and and water we have we had some bigger tests that that we started that have to be finished type thing.

00:26:17,870	And that's one thing too, I thought that government's not as fluid as you think, but because it takes such a long time to get some things done and started things that, that, that I started when I was on the commission three years ago probably won't be finished for another five years just because of processes that got to take place. Yeah, okay.

00:26:34,500	I guess I'm the one that gets to just go random questions all the time here, but what sports do you coach and why did you why did you decide to go into coaching. Why you sports. So I was when I was a freshman at Saint Mary's High School. There's a there's a heck of a football coach there named Dan Smoker.

00:26:48,170	And I had a science class with him. I was, as you can see him, pretty vertically challenged. And I was even more vertically challenged when I was a freshman in high school. He needed a he needed a manager for his football team.

00:27:03,370	And I kind of sheepishly went up and said, hey, what do you think? He's like, yeah. So I went to practice, learned a lot from him, learned a lot from coaches around there with, you know, Roger Hogue and and Toby Schweitzer on the football side of things. And it just kind of grew to basketball with with Russ Ferry and Scott Halvorson and Steve Meyer and Ken Schweiger and Gerald Vetter.

00:27:20,330	I mean, and then you get to know a younger group with I was an assistant coach with Rick Newman and Joe Mueller, and we had we had a good time. He learned a lot of stuff, and it was always about, hey. The next year was, hey, here's a new group, let's go, let's go teach them.

00:27:35,870	Let's build a program. Right? Maybe it's back to my construction things about building things and finishing it type thing. But yeah, that's I love it. I did football, baseball, basketball. And those are we live sports in our in our household.

00:27:54,400	My wife was all conference volleyball player I think in Beulah back in the day and played basketball and stuff. So yeah, we love to compete in our house better. Brace yourself. I feel like I know I only know you from the commission, but I feel like a. Competitive is is not. Not surprising for you. So I like to say that I've never lost a game.

00:28:14,900	They just ran out of. Time. Because it's not my time. My fault that they put time on the. Time games. So we're already seeing the last question. And the last question that we ask everybody is, how would you encourage someone to be a good neighbor? Be welcoming, be opening.

00:28:32,200	You're always going to have differences, right? Work through the difference. Be helpful and be having an HVAC company. There's I find out I have a couple other neighbors and that I usually do, but you just got to just be there for them.

00:28:52,600	Sometimes they just need to talk and you just need to listen, you know, other friends calling me to get things done and just just be there, be open. Yeah, that's a great answer. Well, thank you to everyone for tuning in to These Are Your Neighbors with our guest, Greg Zenker. Thank you for wanting to get to know your neighbors as we hold these important and necessary conversations.

00:29:10,930	If you found this conversation is important as we do, please make sure to share it with your neighbors. Thank you for tuning in to These Are Your Neighbors, a podcast hosted by the City of Bismarck's Human Relations Committee and produced by Dakota Media Access. We hope you were inspired by the stories of citizens driving meaningful change in Bismarck. For more info on the HRC, visit BismarckND.gov.