BATON ROUGE — East Baton Rouge Parish voters have approved a pair of tax renewals for their park system.

Tuesday's vote came amid a number of questions about whether BREC has adequately outlined how it has spent money raised in the past.

The system's treasurer spoke with WBRZ last week and said he had concerns about transparency. BREC is two years behind on its audits, and a recently completed one for 2021 revealed that $70,000 was stolen by former employees. 

Superintendent Corey Wilson says a draft of the 2022 audit has been completed and one for 2023 will be done soon. 

The tax proposals voted on Tuesday account for a significant percentage of BREC funding, about $50 million annually. The money is used to purchase land and to operate the parks and their programs.

The proposals approved Tuesday included a combined proposal for 4.1 mills and 2.1 mills, and another proposal for 3.253 mills. 

A mill is one one-thousandth of a dollar, and is equal to $1.00 of tax for each $1,000 of assessed property value. For a house valued at $100,000, a one-mill property tax totals $100.