The Citizen Oversight Committee reviews the annual plan, project performance, expenditures and recommendations under the ordinance. Members are unpaid volunteers appointed through public processes; county spending is also subject to annual independent audit. Below are their own words about why they do it.
When Brevard voters approved SOIRL in 2016, they did not just approve the tax. They approved a governance structure that put ordinary citizens — not politicians, not staff — in the audit chair. The Citizen Oversight Committee (COC) was written directly into the founding ordinance. It has been meeting monthly, in public, ever since.
Members must comply with applicable Florida and county ethics and voting-conflict rules. Disclosures and recusals are recorded in the meeting minutes and reviewed against the governing rule for each vote where a conflict is disclosed.
The county records short interviews with COC members — why they got involved, what drives them, what they see on the water. These are the voices watching your tax dollars. Regular people. Not political operatives. Not paid consultants. Neighbors.
Video profiles produced by Brevard County as public-service content, not as campaign endorsements. Featured citizens speak about why they volunteer; nothing they say is a statement on the 2026 ballot measure. The full “My Lagoon Story” series is on the Brevard County SOIRL YouTube channel. Full committee meeting recordings — 84 of them, at over 240 hours — are also there, publicly archived.
Public spending programs are commonly overseen by a combination of paid staff, appointed boards, and elected officials. That structure has real advantages — expertise, continuity, accountability — but the incentives of paid staff and career appointees are not the same as those of unaffiliated residents. Standing volunteer oversight boards, when combined with open meetings, published minutes, and independent audits, complement rather than replace paid-staff oversight.
SOIRL was built differently. Nine unpaid citizens — people with day jobs, kids, mortgages, and personal reputations on the line in their neighborhoods — are the ones who look at every project and vote whether to recommend it. They live here. They fish here. They drink the water. If the program stops working, they see it in their own backyards before anyone in Tallahassee does.
The case for trust in the SOIRL oversight structure should rest on public records, open meetings, disclosed conflicts, and independent annual audits — not on claims that volunteers have no incentives or bias. What is verifiable: committee meetings are recorded and publicly posted, financial reports and audits are published, and the November 3, 2026 vote decides whether that structure continues into a second ten-year cycle.
Every monthly Citizen Oversight Committee meeting is open to the public. Public comment is on every agenda. Meeting times, locations, and agendas are posted on the Brevard County Citizen Oversight Committee page. If you want to see how the money is being watched, you are one meeting away.
The case for trust should rest on public records, open meetings, disclosed conflicts and independent audits — not on claims that volunteers have no bias or incentive. On November 3, the question is whether you trust the process, the record, and the neighbors who have been doing this work for a decade — and whether you want them to keep doing it.