The county manager’s proposed 2015-16 Beaufort County budget has been whittled down $3 million as it heads to approval at the June 1 county commissioners’ meeting.

Since the May 18-19 budget workshops, interim County Manager Ken Windley and Chief Finance Officer Mark Newsome slashed what critics claimed was a bloated budget from $60.5 million to $57.4 million.

“We’ve gone back and made a number of cuts to just about every department there is. We have gotten the fund balance appropriation to about $946,000,” Windley told commissioners during Tuesday’s meeting at the County Administrative Offices.

The most recent version of the budget had put an approximate $3.8 million draw on the general fund balance.

A few issues, however, were discussed in depth: the number of new vehicles requested by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office; a potential county water rate increase; Beaufort County Courthouse security; body cameras for sheriff’s office deputies; the longevity of body armor; and funding for capital outlay projects for Beaufort County Schools.

Initially, the sheriff’s office requested money for 27 new vehicles to replace a little over a third of an aging fleet, but that number was dropped to a total of 17 through some number wrangling: eight cars funded by the 2015-16 budget; plus another five funded by money allotted, but never used, in the 2014-15 budget; the remaining cars, a matter of reprioritizing money within the 2015-16 sheriff’s office budget request. In future years, the department intends to start a regular vehicle replacement plan — ideally receiving eight to 10 vehicles per year, according to Chief Deputy Charlie Rose, as the higher the mileage on the vehicle, the more risk of malfunction.

The sheriff’s office had also requested funding for four additional deputies to provide security at the Beaufort County Courthouse. While the most recent budget included that $200,000, Commissioner Frankie Waters had reservations about relying solely on manpower, rather than supplemental video surveillance, while Commissioner Jerry Langley, a probation officer, said the traffic at the courthouse varies so greatly depending on the day and hour of the day, that hiring four deputies was excessive, and Commissioner Hood Richardson said the lack of violent incidents in the courthouse doesn’t justify the expense.

“If we had a lot of incidents, I’d be concerned about it,” Richardson said. “But I’m not concerned about it, based on the incidents.”

Instead it was decided to leave the $200,000 in the budget, and decide later whether it would used on manpower, equipment or studies to determine how much of either is needed to beef up courthouse security.

Also funded was a new video arraignment/visitation system for the Beaufort County Detention Center. To be operate out of a room in the Magistrates’ Office, the video visitation would eliminate visitors from the public areas of the jail, which has been a state-documented security concern. It would also allow first appearances before a judge to take place without moving an inmate from the basement jail to the second floor Superior Court room, which puts inmates in close proximity with the public.

An additional $300,000 was added back to the recommended 2015-16 Beaufort County Schools capital outlay budget to be used for additional bathrooms at Eastern Elementary School, boosting the total to $1.8 million, down from the $2.45 million initially requested by BCS.

At the end of the meeting, Waters made a motion to put a cap on the budget by a straw vote: any further tweaking by county staff before the June 1 meeting would not take the budget above $57,677,386. The vote passed 7-0.