- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(bird squawking) ♪ Shame on me, I'm a fool for the melody ♪ ♪ I don't want to stop right now ♪ ♪ All I need is a drum with a heavy beat ♪ ♪ Hit me with that future sound ♪ - [Female Announcer] Coming to you from Rochester, Minnesota ♪ It's time to let go, we're not going home ♪ - [Female Announcer] R-Town.

♪ This feeling I can't live without ♪ ♪ So shame on me- ♪ - Following the 2020 Census, Minnesota has started the conversation of redrawing district lines and the future of state representation.

With us today is the League of Women Voters to discuss how they are bringing awareness to these topics and why they're important.

Welcome Mary and Maggie.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for being here.

So let's share a little bit about each of you and then we'll dive into these questions 'cause I'm super curious about redistricting.

- Oh, okay.

I grew up in Minnesota.

I've lived in Rochester since 1980.

For me, redistricting is an important issue because it is how people get represented accurately and one person one vote.

So this has been an interest of mine for several years, but the more I learn about it, the more I want to know.

- Thank you, Mary.

And what about you, Maggie?

- Well, I am a transplant and politics has been very different in Minnesota from the state where I grew up.

So it's been utterly fascinating, and I'm a long time member of the League.

- Perfect, now, is this a nonpartisan Group?

- Yes, we are a nonpartisan group.

Our focus is on educating the public.

However, we do lobby on issues of concern to us.

And one of them is that redistricting is an issue for us because we want to make sure that the public is involved in the redistricting.

- Well, that leads perfectly into my first question, why redistricting is so important.

And can you kind of connect the dots on how it connects with the Census population growth, decline, that sort of thing.

- Every 10 years in the Constitution we're required to have a census.

And the US Census Bureau has done that.

And last year, most of us would probably remember filling out forms about that.

In regard to elections, they use the actual number of people.

It's not voters.

It's not reserved for any specific qualification, even in citizenship.

If someone's visiting long-term they are counted even though they're not citizens because they're living here.

It gives us the number of people living here so that we can, in regard to government, we can adjust how many people each representative in say, the city council, the county commissioners for any of the counties in Minnesota so that they have equal number of people in each of their districts so that it doesn't take more people to elect someone in one district versus another.

- Mm-hmm, and that really does matter because the representation reflects that, too.

What does redistricting do?

- Well, the results of the Census will be ready this summer.

Even if all areas of a state are growing, what is important is that we know whether or not each state is growing, each region of the state is growing faster or slower.

Districts that have grown slower than average, will need to grow in area to add voters.

Districts that have grown faster will shrink in area and shrink in the number of voters.

All districts must have the same population, and that is stipulated in both the United States Constitution and the Minnesota Constitution.

So at the state level, the legislature will be redrawing these House and Senate boundaries, the new districts.

Here in Olmsted County and in all Minnesota counties, the county boards will draw the county districts and the city councils will draw their ward districts.

And as far as citizens are concerned, they may find that suddenly they are going to be in a different ward or in a different county commissioner district.

- Oh, that is interesting.

- And will be represented in the future by somebody new.

- Interesting, yeah, and that definitely matters.

What is the role for the League of Women Voters and the community in this discussion?

Because we have an event coming up and we'll share a little bit about that, too.

So can you share what the role is for the community and League of Women Voters?

- We're interested in everything to do with voting and good representation in our government at every level.

And so this has been a major issue for the League from the national to state and local level as far as educating people and helping them understand it because it is complicated, and every state does it a little bit differently.

- And the event is going to be hosted by the League of Women Voters.

What is going to happen at this event?

- We are going to be presenting information on redistricting just the same sort of thing that we've been talking about right here, but we will also be focusing on how citizens can become involved because we feel very strongly that citizens need to be involved.

- And so will this be recorded so that others can watch it?

- Yes, we will be getting it out to the public in a variety of areas, Facebook, other things like that.

- Perfect, then we will point them in that direction.

Thank you, Maggie and Mary, for all that you do in the community, you are appreciated.

(lively instrumental music) Be sure to stick around.

We have much more coming your way on R-Town.

Dan Jensen stops by to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and we visit with the Rochester Figure Skating Club.

But up first, we visit with a local business owner who came to America with a dream in this week's R-Culture segment.

(warm instrumental music) - [Narrator] 1946, World War II recently ended when Peter Schuller was born in Austria.

For the next 10 years, he, his parents, and two brothers would live in a refugee camp in Austria.

World War II was over, but the hardship continued for millions of people impacted by the war including Peter's family.

Times were tough, food was scarce.

- So we ended up in a refugee camp in Stadl-Paura Austria.

(warm instrumental music) So we lived in that camp from '46 until '56.

It was a tar paper army shack, barbed wire fence on the outside, no indoor plumbing, outdoor toilets obviously.

The place was rat infested.

I remember having to go to the bathroom at night and going out there and being scared about rats.

No indoor heating other than a stove that we used for heating as well as cooking.

So that's where we lived then for 10 years.

We did develop some friendships of other people that lived in that camp with us.

We had a river nearby, we had a forest and all that.

So you could get out of this camp, you could go out there and play.

We picked berries out there and all of that.

So that was not that bad of a place to live.

We didn't have to live in a tent.

We didn't have much food, but we did have a little food.

My father was working for a factory at that time making about 25 cents an hour.

- [Narrator] While living in the barracks, Peter's parents applied for citizenship in the United States.

They had family there and to them it looked like heaven on Earth.

(soft instrumental music) (singer vocalizing) When Peter was nine, he had an opportunity to leave the tarp roof army barracks - The Red Cross, they had a program in Austria.

They would take these children out of the refugee camps and they would make provisions for these children to live in another country.

And I was one of those lucky kids.

(warm instrumental music) I ended up then living with a family in Denmark.

So I was in first grade and I ended up with a family by the name of Carl and Dagmar Jacobsen, good Danish people.

- [Narrator] Overnight he went from living in a tarp shack to a house with controlled climate, indoor plumbing, warm showers, and plenty of food.

- It was a brick house.

I had my own bedroom, they provided clothing for me.

We had food every day.

And I look back at that time and I said, you know what?

This is the way I'd like to live someday - [Narrator] Peter returned to live with his family in the army barracks.

Fortunately, his parents' application for US citizenship six years earlier was now approved.

The family moved to the US when Peter was 10.

- When you move from another country, you can say, poor me.

Or you can say, you know what, I'm gonna work just a little harder.

I'm gonna put in a little more effort academically, sports-wise and all of that I was that kind of a kid when I was growing up.

I just worked a little harder, academically, sport-wise and all that and had some relatively good success.

- [Narrator] Peter began learning English at age 10 and worked full-time through high school and college.

Several years after earning his business degree, he founded a Rochester-based construction company with his brother, Karl called A.B.

Systems.

The company has worked a little harder and has been extremely successful.

Peter, his brother, Karl and A.B.

Systems have built more than 2,000 buildings over the last nearly 50 years.

(warm instrumental music) - [Announcer] For more information about this story and other R-Town features connect with us on Facebook, Twitter @KSMQ #RTown or ksmq.org/rtown.

♪ Every single day I wake up ♪ ♪ I don't think about our breakup ♪ ♪ I guess I just want it more ♪ ♪ But I can never get enough ♪ ♪ Now every single day he wakes he just wants to- ♪ - Super excited, this is one of my favorite, favorite things to watch.

We have Maureen Schembri Wismayer from the Rochester Figure Skating Club to share how the local skating world is handling the pandemic and keeping things moving, hopefully with the triple axle.

So Maureen, so excited to talk about this because as a little girl, I used to watch figure skating all the time with my grandparents.

It's one of the most favorite things ever to do.

Give us a little bit of background about yourself and how you got involved with the Rochester Figure Skating Club.

- My name is Maureen and I actually come from a small Island in the Mediterranean Sea where growing up, we swam but we obviously never saw any figure skating because we have no snow and no ice.

So then I moved into Rochester and that's where I started seeing people skating outside.

I was involved in lots of different sports, and then there was this opportunity to work for the club and I was very excited to apply and I took the position.

And the more I worked here, the more I learned about the role, about the sport and what an exciting and varied sport it could be whether you're looking at it from an artistic point of view, from a competitive point of view, from a recreational point of view.

And the athleticism that the skaters have is phenomenal.

- And Maureen, it seems like that is such an incredible outlet, especially right now, as people are facing, continue to face some isolation, but this is a great outlet to be active and to do some things.

How can the community support the skating club?

- We have multiple opportunities for sponsorships which we will support by advertising to our club members.

We have a donation page.

And as we get out of the pandemic, coming to see our events like our competitions, coming to see our show and anything that we hold.

That would be a great way for the community to support the skaters.

- Thank you, Maureen.

And I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing more about this.

I look forward to one day coming to a show to see it in person.

Thanks for tuning in to R-Town Spotlight.

This is Danielle Teal, your moderator with KSMQ Public Television A huge thanks to 125 LIVE for hosting.

Sylwia is amazing, she helps put all this together.

You can also catch up with us on Facebook or Twitter at KSMQ #RTown.

♪ We haven't talked in a while ♪ ♪ I'm worried about our future now ♪ ♪ My boy ain't loyal, he got no respect at all ♪ - As of February 11th, the Olmsted County Public Health Services has administered 3,527 vaccine doses.

The state of Minnesota has expanded the elementary through 12th grade definition to include all education staff while CPHS has offered the COVID-19 vaccine to approximately 50 to 60% of student-facing staff working in E-12 and childcare in the county.

Progress is being made with 24.2% of the total population having received at least one dose of the vaccine and 11.5% completing the two-dose series.

Good progress is being made with adults 65 and older with 35.5% of the county residents having received at least one dose through their medical provider or one of the state-run clinics.

A person does not have to be a resident of Minnesota to get vaccinated here.

It is permissible to vaccinate non-Minnesota residents if they fall into one of the priority groups currently eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.

After getting the COVID-19 vaccine you will probably have a sore arm and you might have muscle aches, tiredness, headache, or maybe a fever though it isn't common.

Sometimes these side effects may stop you from doing your normal activities for a couple of days.

For more information about the COVID-19 vaccine, visit Olmsted County COVID-19 page at olmstedcounty.gov/covid.

Coming up next we visit with Lenny Williams and Dr. Nancy Adegoke to discuss social justice efforts and how to be an ally in this week's Walkabout segment.

(upbeat instrumental music) - This is Amarachi Orakwue with R-Town Walkabout.

Last Tuesday, Trill or Not Trill partnered with Rochester Community and Technical College and Winona State University to host anti-racist lab workshops.

- Today's workshop I actually focused on allyship.

So just giving a foundation and an understanding to the process of allyship.

I would say that being an ally is someone who is committed to social justice, and it's a lifelong process in terms of making changes that promote equality in our society.

- Trill or Not Trill is a is a culturally responsive leadership organization, and we decided to find a way to bridge the gap to make sure that everybody's included when we're talking about leadership development.

So every race, every background, every gender, every age is included when we're teaching these methods of leadership development.

The word trill is made up of two words.

True and real, right?

So we are bringing the truth, but also talking about reality and bringing those two terms together.

- It sounds like you both are involved in empowering young African-American students.

- That means understanding the history in terms of the disparities and inequities that exist in communities of Color and with marginalized group.

Being an ally means taking those steps, being an active player in terms of changing some of the institutional structural racism that exists in our society.

You can do it on an individual level, whether it's being with friends and kind of taking note of inappropriate comments and jokes that are being used against marginalized groups, or you're doing it on a campus or larger level in terms of taking part in activities or rallies that show your commitment to making change.

- This has been R-Town Walkabout with Amarachi Orakwue.

♪ One more song is never enough ♪ ♪ We ain't gonna stop when the sun comes up ♪ ♪ Put the night on replay ♪ - Vaccine rollout is still developing and supplies are becoming more available every day.

With us today is Dan Jensen.

You may have heard of him.

He's with the Olmsted County Public Health to discuss how Olmsted County is handling the rollout and what can be expected in the near future.

Welcome Dan.

- Well, thank you for having me on, I appreciate that.

- Well, we appreciate you being here, and it seems like you are the man of the hour.

I obviously, I heard about you and heard how successful this recent mass vaccination went.

And I had to have you on the show so we could talk more about that.

So can you describe what the current vaccine rollout looks like currently?

Who's getting it and where people can receive it.

I think maybe there's another vaccination clinic on deck and how people can get appointments, all that good stuff logistically with the vaccines.

- Yeah, I think it's important to note that we all wish we had more vaccine available.

I don't think there's anybody that works with the vaccine that is happy with the amount of vaccine that's available in the community.

But I will say that I'm very proud of our community and all of Minnesota for that matter because this has really many areas of the community stepping up, stepping forward to be able to assist with this very important work that's happening.

So in the midst of that, we see areas that are working on vaccine within Olmsted County focused within pharmacies, Mayo Clinic, Olmsted Medical Center, Olmsted County Public Health.

We also have other individuals, other areas that are working on this.

We have a couple of smaller clinics that are really assisting with the minority populations and some of the other areas that are typically underserved.

And then as you're probably well aware, we have a state clinic.

We had a pilot site with Willow Creek and now we have a permanent site at Mayo Civic Center.

So we have a lot of different players that are delivering vaccines and all of them, there's a little bit of overlap, but the vast majority of them are targeting different specific areas of the population.

So examples can include the over 65 have largely been done by the state, through their clinic and through Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center.

Olmsted County Public Health has been very focused on the school teachers, but some of the pharmacies have been assisting with that work also.

So it really depends on which portion of the population we're focusing on at any given time.

That's delivered to us through the state.

We follow the state's direction.

They send out a survey in the early parts of the week or even late in the week.

And then that drives their decision-making to understand where based off of that upcoming population, you've probably heard a lot about the 1a group.

And as we walk through there, whatever those individual businesses or organizations may have done, we had worked with the state on the homeless population.

We worked with the state on dental practices, on chiropractors, on other medical providers.

And as all of them rolled out the states surveyed us to understand what the need was as they did the rest of the state.

And then the next week they would make vaccine allocations available to us.

And then we would stand that up within 72 hours of getting the vaccine.

It's our job to have 90% of that into people's arms.

And the remaining 10% has to be completed by the end of the seven days.

And then we also have to be able to have 24 hours after giving the vaccine, have that information entered into the state system.

So it's a fairly rapid turnaround process from survey, getting the vaccine, having it allocated to a specific group, standing up those clinics, delivering that vaccine.

- And it's very obvious that there are moving parts in many different aspects of that.

I'm just blown away by the fact that you have 72 hours to stand that up.

And one thing I really want to differentiate, and I talked about this in another show, was that there were pilots that helped inform some of this work.

Is that correct, Dan?

Yeah, there's been, interestingly enough, there's been pilots in a lot of these different areas that we've focused on, and some of them were very specific to vaccine delivery.

Some of them have just been pilots that we've done in other areas and the information we learned and gleamed from that we were able to move forward.

So what we talked a little bit about, there was a pilot by the state at Willow Creek.

- Right.

- They've now moved that to the Mayo Civic Center so the Mayo Civic Center is becoming their permanent site.

Lessons learned from the one are being applied to the other.

Specifically for Olmsted County Public Health, and I know we'll talk about more of this later.

So this is just a little bit of a quick intro.

- [Danielle] Sure.

- We've tested for over 10 years what we're gonna do in the event of a mass vaccination clinic.

So we were very prepared when we knew that we needed to do that mass vaccination clinic over two days to be able to get thousands of doses.

- That's amazing, Dan.

So really quickly, can you give us an update on where we're at currently with the vaccinations and then what's gonna happen next steps?

But then I want to talk about the successful mass vaccination.

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I'm just looking down at some notes that I took earlier and I'm pretty proud to announce that you're actually getting the scoop on this one.

As of today, we have vaccinated 24.6% of Olmsted County residents.

(cheering) So really we're a quarter of the way through.

Out of four people is where we're landing at.

Now, we know that there's a lot of groups that are underrepresented in the midst of that.

And we definitely want to keep working with the state and moving out into the others, but we've made it 1/4 of the way through.

- And this is dependent on what's provided by the state, correct?

- Yes, yes.

- I mean, we're at a point at the mercy of how many vaccines come down here and then we're able to just push this out.

Let's talk about what's happening next.

- Yeah, so the next steps are, as we work with the state they're going to provide the vaccine allocations to us.

And then based off of those allocations, we'll reach out to individuals within the community to target those groups, but we have an online business form.

So an example is, we've worked with the school districts and each of the school districts in our community have filled out these business forms.

We recently were given permission to work with the clergy and vaccinate them.

So we reached out to a lot of the faith organizations and just asked them to fill out the business form.

All of that prep ahead of time, then, when the state is releasing specific vaccines at specific targeted groups, we pull up our business forms and we understand who that organizational point of contact.

So then we look at our vaccine that's available as compared to the number of doses that are being requested by each of these organizations in that target.

And then we allocate that off, based off a percentage.

So let's say that we have 50% of the vaccine that can cover all of a certain group.

Then we would have 50% of the large organizations and 50% of the small organizations.

We invite that many people to sign up for our online clinic.

We reach out to the point of contact.

We provide them with the links and then have them work within their organizations and businesses, decide who should be getting them.

We are not over-allocating to the large businesses.

We're not under-allocating or over-allocating to the small one, trying to do that in a fair and equitable manner.

I think that's worked pretty well.

Each organization knows their business best and who works there and how they should deliver that.

And within that, we're making sure that we're getting those businesses connected as best as we can.

And while it's not a perfect process, it's worked fairly well for us.

- I get goosebumps as you're talking about it 'cause I can tell that this was quite impactful for you.

We're so grateful to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

- Yes, absolutely, thank you very much.

- For more wonderful content produced right here in Rochester, please be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter at #RTown.

Be well and be safe.

We'll see you next time on R-Town, the show about Rochester.

♪ This is where the beat goes down ♪ ♪ This is where the beat goes down ♪ ♪ This is where the beat goes ♪ (calm instrumental music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.