Remarks by Harry Cohen
21 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 1
- Play at 8:26
“Okay, thank you. I'll second your motion.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 8, 2026
- Play at 17:36
“And I believe, excuse me, I think you can do that as of right, correct? Yes. Okay.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 8, 2026
- Play at 28:08
“Okay. So they do need to come back to us for zoning, however, correct? Correct.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 8, 2026
- Play at 28:16
“So this is only step one. I mean, I understand the reservation here, but the board will have another bite at this apple. And I think the concern is that all of a sudden we'll get a bunch of people relying on this to achieve bigger densities around it. How do we prevent that from happening?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 8, 2026
- Play at 29:42
“And there was no opposition to this? No, no, sir.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 8, 2026
- Play at 30:20
“Okay, well, I'll take that as a motion from Commissioner Cameron Cepeda and I'll second it.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 8, 2026
- Play at 1:11:16
“I don't want to beat a dead horse, but you're all absolutely right. And I just want to say, Commissioner Wustall, I was on the MPO in 2012 as a member of the Tampa City Council. I remember this discussion very, very well as though it was yesterday and everything that you said is correct about what unfolded and led to it being removed from the list. And again, to just reiterate what Commissioner Miller just said, this is about planning. This is about making thoughtful decisions now as opposed to playing catch up in the future. So I'll be happy to support your item.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 1:44:05
“First of all, thank you very much for a very thorough report. And I know we all appreciate all of the work that everyone is doing. A couple of questions. First of all, if you are a person who just saw this report on television and you want to check around your own house and do basically an inspection, what exactly should you be looking for in your yard?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 1:45:11
“Is it enough just to dump the water out?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 1:45:22
“Second question. Should people be applying more insect repellent? And should children be wearing insect repellent?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 1:45:38
“So we really ought to be treating insect repellent the way that we treat sunscreen.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 1:45:56
“Thank you. Thank you very much. Excellent.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 2:01:09
“Thank you very much, and I'll be brief. Many of you are aware that there are growing safety concerns related to the operation of micro mobility devices, which really encompass e-bikes and other type of vehicles. other type of modes of transportation, I should say. You may know that Orange County recently adopted an ordinance to bring some structure to the use of these types of devices. And I've been working with the sheriff and the county attorney's office on an ordinance to do that here in Hillsborough County. And as usual with these ordinances, we're going to write it in such a way that the…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 2:07:04
“Yeah, I'd like to offer a substitute motion to defer this. It came up very recently. I wanna have a chance to digest the arguments you've made and that's what I'd like to make a substitution.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 2:14:12
“Commissioner Cohen. So, What you're saying is that you want to change it from in the morning to at night as well. And unfortunately, I just checked my calendar. I already have a conflict that night. I don't know about everybody else, but I just... I'm a little bit, I would like to try to accommodate what you're asking for, but the problem is, is that scheduling the proper date and time for it may be difficult. So that's my difficulty with supporting that part of your motion. On the issue of splitting the question, I'm in support of that. If you would like to do that, I think that's fair.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 2:19:09
“I just think that it may be a very general motion that allows you to just work through this with them and figure out when it's gonna be. That to me seems like the best.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 2:22:39
“Commissioner Cohen, you're recognized. Thank you. I have two. The first is I attended a town hall meeting recently with Councilman Vieira at Tampa City Hall discussing an epidemic of drowning among children with autism. And I wanted to bring it back here to ask the county administrator and our staff to look into things that we can do to educate the public about this problem. Specifically, I was told that the Department of Health has pool alarms that are available at no cost. These are alarms that tell people when something falls into the water. And I thought that it might be possible for us…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 2:13:12
“Thank you. I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. And I also would mention that at least I know of one institution, the Tampa Museum of Art, that I think would also like to be at least considered as part of whatever process we come up with. I agree that we, I'm agnostic in the sense that I want to help all these organizations. I just think that they need to be considered as a group with us looking at whatever the total amount of money we have available is and then figuring out almost maybe in a pro rata type way how to accommodate everyone to to the ability that that we have to do so so i…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:23:52
“I actually agree with you, Commissioner Wastl, that I think that when we evaluate all of these organizations, part of the evaluation should include not just the CRA support that they get, but any other public support that they get, perhaps from the state or other funding, so we have a holistic view of how everybody is funding their operations. but I still think it's better to do it all at once when we have everybody in front of us and can sort of evaluate them based on the same criteria. So I don't object at all to the CRA contributions being considered absolutely as part of the discussion,…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:47:15
“My main interest here is clarity. And I just want to make sure that whatever the rules are, they're clear. That's to me the most important thing. In terms of the details of it, As far as I'm concerned, I like the stricter rules better. It's easier to know exactly where the lines are. And I would prefer not to be lobbied on any of these issues at all and to simply have it out here in the boardroom without having all these meetings going on. So for that reason, I'm inclined to want to go back to the more stringent requirements but either way however it turns out what i really want is clarity…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:58:10
“Yeah, I would like to move this item and I would like to just point out in doing so that this is what is going to give the county the ability to value engineer the project and actually achieve some cost savings if they are available to us. It would be very penny wise and pound foolish not to approve this.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026