Oak Bluffs residents accustomed to the marathon week-long spectacle that has come to characterize town meetings in recent years will be shocked to see the length of this year’s warrant.

“It’s very short,” said selectman Ron DiOrio this week. The push for simplification comes as a reaction to last year’s town meeting which saw 30 warrant articles and some 12 Proposition 2 1/2 override questions. Voters rejected 11 of those overrides and sent selectmen scrambling to reorganize the budget. The town meeting ran into a second week.

This year there are 14 articles on the warrant and only two override questions on the ballot.

“The approach in the past has been to go into the town meeting counting on the overrides and then you’d have to reconvene again when they were rejected,” said Mr. DiOrio. “This approach is very different. The voters are getting a budget that is balanced and then those advocates for the overrides can then speak to it and mount whatever forces they want to either support it or defeat it. The approach is very different and going forward that’s the only approach we should be using.”

The two overrides which total $484,361 include nearly $250,000 in road resurfacing costs and a separate question that would pay $75,000 for a new town finance director, $50,000 for two teaching aid positions at the Oak Bluffs school, $15,000 for a contract employee at the shellfish department and a number of other items selectmen were forced to cut from this year’s budget, from patrolmen’s salaries to library expenses.

The finance committee voted 4-2 to endorse the overrides, explaining in its official recommendation:

“Those who voted for the override believe that town government has done as much as it can to economize and needs more funding. Those who voted against the override believe that more organizational restructuring can be done within the basic budget to accommodate most of the override items.”

The proposed $24.6 million budget, not including overrides, is up $267,050, or one per cent from last year’s budget, an increase that after weeks of painful budget trimming, largely reflects rising town health insurance and pension costs. Last month town administrator Michael Dutton said the town expects to pay almost $400,000 more this year to insure town employees.

The largest spending article on the warrant is $632,000 in Community Preservation Act projects. The community preservation committee is asking voters to approve $160,000 for an engineering study of Niantic Park to address flooding concerns, $55,000 for an engineering study of Sunset Lake and Lake Park — which faces the threat of phragmites — $45,000 for a Massachusetts Estuaries Project study of Oak Bluffs harbor and Sunset Lake, $40,000 in lantern restoration and $332,000 for affordable housing initiatives and rental assistance.

The town is also asking voters to approve the transfer of $150,000 from the wastewater retained earnings account to fund the engineering, permitting and bid preparation for a large sewering project of subdivisions on the Oak Bluffs side of the ailing Lagoon Pond. Last month the town heard from representatives of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project that the pond was overloaded with nitrogen, leaving its southern basin almost completely devoid of life. The problem could be remedied, the representatives argued, in part by a cooperative effort between Oak Bluffs and Tisbury to sewer town properties in the watershed.

Another article proposes changing a parcel that abuts Tony’s Market from residential to business. The article has proved controversial to residents of Winthrop avenue.

“The intent is to try to make Dukes County avenue a bit safer by getting trucks to deliver to Tony’s by accessing Winthrop avenue,” Mr. Dutton said. “Some neighbors and people on Winthrop avenue see that as making Dukes County avenue safer at their expense.”

The last article on the warrant, submitted by petition, resolves to reduce U.S. spending on military activity in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The night will begin with a special town meeting in which voters will be asked to approve three spending articles that the town has not been able to fund through its exhausted free cash reserves. Instead the town is asking voters to transfer monies from its stabilization, or rainy day fund, including $50,000 to repair the library HVAC system, $65,558 to supplement four budget line items, and $20,000 to remove contaminated soils as part of the Lake avenue extension project.

“When we did the Lake avenue project at the end of July the rest of project was picked up by Mass Highway, but there were contaminated soils that had to be removed,” Mr. Dutton said on Thursday. “Pretty much the Circuit avenue extension and the whole area down there has been contaminated with gasoline for years and years.”

Mr. Dutton said that there was $1.1 million in the town’s stabilization fund.

Both the special and annual town meetings begin at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Performing Arts Center.