Updated: Oak Bluffs Election: Higher Taxes or Unpaved Roads?

Updated: Oak Bluffs voters roundly defeated both spending overrides, by a margin of nearly two to one. A full recap will appear on the site tomorrow.

Oak Bluffs voters will go to the polls today to decide whether the town should raise taxes in order to restore deep cuts made to the budget. The election marks the latest in a series of moves the cash-strapped town has had to take in recent years to manage its finances.

In January, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue asked Oak Bluffs officials to cut nearly a quarter of a million dollars from the town's fiscal year 2011 budget due to revenue shortfalls. It was the second consecutive year the town has been forced to make mid-year cuts after revenue failed to match up with projections.

The town followed followed through on those orders and made deep cuts to programs and personnel, resulting in a $25 million budget presented at the annual town meeting. Yet even as that bare-bones budget was presented, town administrator Michael Dutton warned it might not suffice. Spending overrides would be required to reinstate important services, including road paving and teaching aide positions, Dutton said.

Voters at the annual town meeting were asked to approve the budget and place the overrides on the ballot in May. In doing so, the town would be left with a workable budget even if the overrides should fail, as they have in the past.

Voters agreed to the protracted process and easily passed the diminshed budget. Today, they’ll have their chance to weigh in on whether they think some of those budget cuts should be restored.

The ballot that will be presented to voters today contains two questions. The first asks for $230,000 in property and real estate taxes to reinstitute paving and road maintenance, which has been largely suspended for the past two years. “We've put off repairs for several years and we're way behind. Our roads are in rough shape,” highway superintendent Richard Combra said at the annual town meeting. Combra noted that the cost of asphalt paving material had nearly doubled since the program was suspended.

The second question on the ballot asks for $254,361 to fund a variety of department expenses. Those expenses include $75,000 to pay for a new finance director, a position left vacant since the death of former finance director Paul Manzi in 2010, and $50,000 to pay for two Oak Bluffs School aides. Additional funds are marked for the police, fire and ambulance departments.

A copy of the ballot with full earmarked expenditures  is attached.

Polls will be open at the Oak Bluffs Library from noon to 7 p.m.