Brevard Moms for America Chair Katie Delaney calls for ‘transparency,’ vies for commission seat

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Moms for America Brevard County Chair Katie Delaney is calling for “transparency” and throwing her hat in the ring for Brevard County Commission District 1 seat.

Delaney told Florida’s Voice it is time for “new blood” and believes the current commission has been “doing the same thing” which has led to a place of “complacency.”

The seat is currently held by Rita Pritchett, who cannot run in 2024 due to term limits.

“There’s no growth, there’s no ‘new and improved,’ there’s none of that,” Delaney said.

“We have to kind of move forward and until we get some new blood in our government as a whole, it’s not going to change and we need to make sure that we have people in there that have new ideas and bring a different flair into our government,” she said.

Delaney said she believes that the country is “under attack at every level, our way of life, our American rights and freedoms.”

When COVID-19 struck, Delaney said she recognized the need to put her business and personal life on hold to “prevent government overreach from adversely impacting our community and nation.”

Delaney is a wife, mother of three, and has lived in Brevard the majority of her life.

She said she dedicated “extensive time and effort” to engage with the school board, advocating against mask mandates, excessive disciplinary issues, and what she calls “irresponsible spending.”

“I’ve worked really hard to understand what a lot of the issues are and I know that I can help fix some of the things because a lot of it has to do with wasteful spending, and kind of “going along to get along” and just rubber stamping a lot of the same things that we’ve been doing for decades,” Delaney explained.

Over the years, she has made numerous trips to Tallahassee to address lawmakers to “ensure the protection of medical freedom and parental rights.”

Additionally, Delaney said she has previously championed causes like constitutional carry and school choice at the capitol.

Over the last three years, she said she’s dedicated herself to a comprehensive study of the school board’s substantial $1.6 billion budget.

Delaney believes she gained a “profound understanding of the intricate web of government regulations that govern expenditure and financial allocations.”

As a county commissioner, Delaney said her primary focus will be “safeguarding the interests of the citizens.”

A call for “transparency”

If elected, Delaney said with her assistance, transparency will be “reintroduced” to the county government.

She said she believes that citizens “deserve to be well-informed about how and why their money is being spent, and what it is being allocated to.”

“The most concerning thing to me is the lack of transparency that the majority of our commission has,” Delaney said.

She said “at the end of the day, it’s the people who are in charge of our country,” and officials are being entrusted with taxpayer money.

“We need to be 100% transparent with people because the decisions that we make, especially at a county or city level, affect the day to day life of the citizens,” Delaney said.

Issues and spending

Delaney said she is committed to “ensuring that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently,” prioritizing “crucial aspects” such as infrastructure and public safety.

“Our roads are crumbling, our bridges need to be updated, our sewage systems here are crumbling, everything is so outdated and has been ignored for so long and everything just keeps getting pushed back,” Delaney said.

Delaney said she believes they are going to have a “real problem” if they don’t focus on “getting infrastructure under control.”

The second issue Delaney will focus on is public safety. She said police, fire and EMTs “need support.”

“They need more funding for training and they need to have the supplies that they need to ensure that people can get the services they need – like a firefighter should not be looking around for life saving materials that they need, that should be ready readily available for them, so we need to make sure that they’re funded properly,” Delaney said.

One thing that Delaney has an issue with is the lagoon funding that taxpayers paid for.

According to the Brevard County website, the “Save Our Indian River Lagoon Program” was created with the one-half cent sales tax that Brevard County residents voted to impose on themselves in 2016.

It is estimated that the plan will bring in up to $586 million in revenue over 10 years to fund projects that will reduce or remove over 1.3 million pounds of excess nitrogen and 106,000 pounds of phosphorus annually from the Indian River Lagoon.

She said a lot of the money has gone to testing.

Delaney said the money could have been spent on “replacing pipes that are constantly breaking and causing sewage leaks into the river,” but instead they’re “forcing everyone to get rid of their septic tanks and hook into the sewer lines.”

In north Brevard, Delaney said a child became paralyzed from an infection from bacteria in the river.

Florida Today previously reported a lawsuit was filed against the city after the boy became paralyzed from a sewer pipe that allegedly “burst at the bottom of a pond at Sand Point Park.”

“We’ve spent all this taxpayer dollars and for what? So all that money has gone down the drain when really it could have been spent on our infrastructure,” Delaney said

“It’s like, alright, we’ve done the testing, now let’s fix some things,” Delaney explained.

Delaney said she believes they are “trying to clean something up with muddy water,” and “it’s never gonna get cleaned up if we don’t stop the leaks.”

“We have to stop the leaks first, and then we can clean up the river,” Delaney said.

2024 Election

According to the Brevard Supervisor of Elections, four other candidates have filed for the seat including Democrat Bryan Edward Bobbitt, Republican Robert L. Jordan Jr., Republican Dwight Seigler, and Libertarian Nathan Ray Slusher. 

The election will take place Nov. 5, 2024.