The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners will sit down to iron out next year’s budget at two upcoming workshops.

The workshops will be held at the county administrative offices in Washington on Monday and Tuesday, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. An additional workshop will be held Wednesday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. if necessary, according to County Clerk Katie Mosher.

The budget workshops allow commissioners to pour through the budget department by department, a budget provided by interim County Manager Ken Windley. Budget requests were turned into the county last month. Since, Windley and county CFO Mark Newsome have been fine-tuning the requests, sitting down with department heads, Mosher said.

Commissioners will meet with Windley, Newsome and other finance department employees at Monday’s workshop, while individual department heads will address the commissioners on Tuesday.

“Hopefully, by the end of it, they’ll have the 2015-16 budget firmed up,” Mosher said.

Last year’s budget was $54,131,752; this year, the budget process is running a bit behind schedule, likely in response to a troublesome audit released in April and a resulting increased vigilance by the county finance department, according to Mosher.

The budget will be presented at the June 1 commissioners’ meeting and a public hearing will be held on June 15.

“That’s so if there’s anything that stands out that the public totally disagrees with, we have the chance to know that that’s what the public wants,” Mosher said.

At the May Board of Commissioners meeting, held at the Washington High School Performing Arts Center to accommodate approximately 140 Belhaven residents there to support a county loan to those seeking to reopen the now closed Vidant-Pungo Hospital, one county resident had a request relative to the budget: lower county taxes.

Warren Smith asked commissioners to consider lowering property taxes by 15 percent because the county has built up a surplus via the 2010 property revaluation.