Remarks by Joshua Wostal
62 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 3
- Play at 2:25:07
“Thank you, Commissioner Whistle. Thank you, mine is more of just a moment of personal privilege to remind the community that today is the third anniversary of the attack of Hamas on Israel, and that many of our own community members were personally affected by that, and remind them that three years ago, two years ago now as it was, this board proudly stood with them on that attack, and I hope that they can do the same today, three years later, thank you.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 7, 2026
- Play at 29:16
“Commissioner Wollstone. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm very familiar with this street. I built one of the new townhouses there in 2012 as I was getting out of the military actually. It looks like a huge increase to the square footage entitlements. Um, and it's reptron is just a tiny, tiny little one lane road. There's no way it can be expanded. Um, we pled forever, um, to get a stoplight there. Finally, someone got killed, which is the, um, requirement most of the time to get a stoplight, unfortunately. And we, we got it after a little while. So, um, Can you expand on what type of uses are allowed…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 31:03
“Okay, actually, so even, I mean, it's going to increase the FAR, but these types of uses are going to have probably less amount of daily users, I guess, in an industrial than what's already allowed there. I guess that's how they would be able to get away with taking away parking lots. Is that fair?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 31:50
“Oh. Okay, they're going to put a building right next to those townhomes. Interesting.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 32:07
“All right, well, I'll be interested to see that building location. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 23, 2026
- Play at 8:33
“Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, everyone. Another rare proclamation given by me from my office and one that I'm proud to give because it's from the industry that I actually came from, the manufacturing industry. So who do we have here today to receive it? Thank you so much for coming. I'll call you up here in a little bit to award it to you and take a picture. But I will read it now into the record. Whereas October is nationally recognized as manufacturing month and manufacturing day is observed on the first day of October. And throughout the month, manufacturers across the county…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:34:43
“Commissioner Wilson. Very brief. One thing that I think is often overlooked, and it's why the expansion down to 674 is so important, is the South County has the same issue that the veterans has. That took me an hour and 20 minutes to get here from Westchase this morning, which is that We really haven't grown that much it's that the surrounding counties have pounded those borders And this is something that could catch a lot of that northbound traffic in the morning and southbound in the evenings which will alleviate The lower level roads for the locals and I think that that's just a benefit…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:47:12
“Thanks, can you give me an idea of, there's no backup. So can you give me an idea of like what deliverables you're going to seek from them? Especially since they're a state agency and they are, most people forget, but they are elected officials.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:47:41
“do they report to Soil and Water, not to FDACS directly?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:47:58
“But their oversight is from FDACS, right?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:48:07
“Yeah, I mean, the... The look back that's been kicked around so much, there was new requirements put in a couple of years ago that said the people on the Soil and Water District Supervisor Boards, that they had a requirement to meet eligibility such as actually being in agriculture and then basically none of them that were on the board at one point had anything to do with agriculture. It just, that office at one point was used for many years as a political stepping stone. And so most of our supervisors actually had to resign themselves from the board because they didn't meet the…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:58:53
“All right, thanks, Adam. Commissioner Wilson. And this one won't have serious question on whether it helps farmers or not like the past one. I was surprised. Can you estimate how much the school impact fee per unit on farm worker housing is?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:59:27
“Yeah, it's a lot of money and some of our berry farmers, particularly the ranchers, don't really utilize this mechanism, but they have tens of thousands a year of H-2A visa workers on their Hillsborough County farms. And this is gonna be a huge and long time known, I would add, and needed relief that should not have been impacting them. I'm really grateful for all of your work on this. I'm still yet to find one that can provide me an H-4 visa, which is the required company dependent visa. The school's revenue consultant claimed that they did find one. I said, please provide me the H-4 visa,…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:15:51
“motion commissioner second commissioner myers uh commissioner wellstone thank you and um just be prepared for a substitute motion mr chair um all of the agencies that were shown on the on your spreadsheet today um and and i will i will handle um staffs um and what my opinion is disobedience in this matter the motion in april was for you to enter into a negotiation of a public-private partnership with the zoo. And we won't get in that today, because today is a positive meeting about the Board of County Commissioners partnering with ISWADA at least a three-year project and ask from Zoo Tampa to…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:17:39
“Well, I have already verified it for the board. And I actually have some numbers for you. Specifically, the Tampa Museum of Art was mentioned earlier. they received $24 million of the CRA in a three-year period, much more per year on schedule and pace for what the zoo is asking for. Can somebody confirm, most people don't understand the CRAs, but that's actually the county contributing their countywide funds to those districts, correct?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:18:24
“Not the one that you got us removed from. None of those are in there. The point is that the Board of County Commissioners is already substantially partnering financially in all of those other cultural assets. The interesting thing about the zoo is that they are uniquely left out, Commissioner Cepeda, of all of the CRAs. They don't have... access to those additional funding sources. They're the ones that kind of get left behind. We partner pretty heavily with some of the organizations that asked for money as well through tourist development taxes pretty substantially. Actually, one of the…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:26:38
“Okay, Commissioner Wohlstuhl. Thanks, I would just close in saying thank you Commissioner Cepeda for seconding the motion and Commissioner Bowles for your exact points. You stole some of my future talking points about their visitors. And look, commissioners champion items of their priorities all the time, including cultural centers that are randomly getting money that is having money depreciating for like five years right now of people's taxpayers money and those commissioners bring their items and they fight for their priority and this is one that i felt like is just going to be such a…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:30:34
“Thank you very much. And John, I don't know if you were intending or needed to speak to any of the... portions of the contract if you do. I'm happy to afford you that opportunity. I would point out to my colleagues that there's various members of Zoo Tampa here, including their CFO, if you had any financial questions. Speaking of the financials, I will tell you that not even the zoo got everything they wanted. There was scheduling pro forma kind of challenges with the bigger ticket items that we had to rearrange in the funding schedule. There is a clause that was intentionally itemized in…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:33:12
“Correct, which I was aware that we would need to, and I'll discuss that later. But as I said earlier in the previous discussion, this is not a hasty appeal. I know that I've been hearing about this item almost since the time that I arrived here on the board in the end of 2022, probably started hearing about it in 2023. This is an exciting enhancement to the community. As I said in April, this is not about the zoo. This is about the many endangered species that the zoo provides, not only a safe haven, but in many cases, another unique aspect of our zoo is the rehabilitation efforts that they…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:38:29
“That's fine. John, can you tell me about how much time you'll need to finalize the contract then? Or I guess we could technically, I don't know. Do you want the public hearing? We approved Commissioner Hagan's Fletcher District and the funding prior to the CIT project list. We just did that today. So what's the timeline that you'd need?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:39:27
“So you want me to motion to proceed forward with finalizing the contract with Zoo Tampa and bring back the item to the next regularly scheduled Board of County Commissioners meeting, which is October 7th. How could I forget, unfortunately? And is that good?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:40:27
“Okay, Commissioner Wohlstuhl? Yeah, this is empowering and authorized the County Attorney's Office to finalize the contract agreement. John and I talked about this, that they would need to be empowered to make any legalese changes or scrivener's errors that may or may not exist throughout the document. So we're aware of that.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:45:03
“Thank you, Mr. Chair. I see you queued up, Commissioner Bowles. So you can go ahead and then,”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:48:14
“Thank you. All that the change really did was the old rules required the duly elected officials to vote on something without them ever getting to engage with the people involved. And you and I have thought a lot of life today in each of these items. You stole my point is that there's so many RFPs that are out there. One thing that particularly, you know, Other than one comment that former Commissioner Kemp made that was just grossly inappropriate to Commissioner Owen at the time, I've never really wanted to say anything to another commissioner until this was brought up where an inference was…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 2:51:10
“And I would just say that the CDBGDR program would be nowhere as award-winning, whatever efficient compliment staff's getting if we weren't able to engage with those subject matter experts, because I don't know anything about CDBGR program. So I will be a no vote on this. I believe that the current one protects the process and also equally protects our constituency. Commissioner Myers.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 16, 2026