BATON ROUGE – The mayor's office has outlined their plan to collect the new road tax.

Voters approved the sales tax to fund some 70 road projects in East Baton Rouge Parish in Saturday's election.

The mayor announced that they would begin to collect the tax funds on April 1, of 2019. They say between now and then they will be hiring a program manager and start to gather data on all the projects in order to begin to prioritization process of the 70 projects.

The mayor and other prominent business leaders heavily promoted the half-cent, 30-year sales tax to fund the work.

The tax passed with 61 percent, some 44,680 votes. Thirty-nine percent, or 28,690 voters, attempted to tank the tax.

The tax would generate about $900 million for work on streets across East Baton Rouge Parish.

It was the mayor’s second attempt at a tax to increase road work started by the previous administration under a similar road projects plan.

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