Beaufort County commissioners will meet tonight to iron out a budget that is currently millions of dollars bigger than fiscal year 2014-15.

The meeting will take place at the County Administrative Offices in Washington at 5 p.m.

While commissioners met with county staff last week during two budget workshop sessions, the focus was on budget requests from various departments and determining specifics as to how the money would be used.

But the work of hashing out a list of new, one-time expenditures in the county manager’s recommended 2015-16 budget will happen during the meeting tonight. With Beaufort County Schools’ budget request at $2.8 million above last year’s; Beaufort County Community College’s $688,000 request increase; an additional $572,230 by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office to replace as many vehicles as necessary in an aging fleet; and several other requests for capital and non-recurring costs, the recommended budget comes in at $60.5 million, roughly $6 million more than the 2014-15 county budget.

It’s a figure that is not sitting well with several commissioners.

“I have problems with the budget — the dollar amount,” said Commissioner Frankie Waters, as the budget workshop came to a close on May 19. “I think too many times we look at these numbers and we look at the totals and we forget where it comes from. … When you look at it, we’re dipping into our savings, what I call our savings, by $3.8 million.”

Waters said while the past Board had worked hard to build the available fund balance up, but if the recommended budget passed as is, the fund balance would take a hard hit.

Board Chairman Gary Brinn said that taking away the one-time expenditures would put the proposed budget below the 2014-15 numbers. Brinn argued that the county has an obligation to maintain its assets — funding maintenance and repairs make up the budget increases for BCS and BCCC.

“There’s things that have been needed to be done in this county, that have been kicked off down the road for five or six years,” Brinn told commissioners. “That’s what that fund balance is for.”

Critics of the budget, however, argue that an approved $60 million this year would require a 5-percent hike in taxes by 2017.

Waters said the budget has some fluff and can afford to be pared down — the work of which will be done in tonight’s meeting. The meeting is open to the public.

Beaufort County Administrative Offices are located at 121 W. Third St., Washington.