Oak Bluffs will have to make do with a severely cut-down, no-frills budget this year after voters soundly rejected two Proposition 2 1/2 overrides in a special town election yesterday.

A total of 559 voters turned out to vote in Thursday’s special election, rejecting a measure that would have restored $230,000 in cuts to the town’s road paving program by a 376 to 182 vote and another that would have restored $254,000 to town coffers to hire a town finance director, two teaching aides at the Oak Bluffs school, an animal control officer and an assistant for the shellfish department. That ballot question was defeated 387 to 170.

To add to the town’s woes, the election may not have been legal. Town clerk Deborah deBettencourt Ratcliff said last night that she never received a properly-posted warrant and that the town may now be required to put an article on a June 21 special town meeting warrant to petition the state legislature to accept the election results. There was some grumbling at the polls from voters who said they didn’t even know there was an election.

If the results are allowed to stand, they appear to reflect an electorate that has become increasingly dissatisfied with town management.

“You cannot manage your budget every year like this,” said voter Pat Tankard outside the polls at the Oak Bluffs library on Thursday. “Every year they’re asking for an override and that is not sound fiscal management. They have to look at other alternatives for funding. The fact is that this is an Island and sometimes you have to make hard choices and you may have to hurt people but this is what you have to do.”

As she left, Ms. Tankard said that she would recruit more townspeople to come vote the same way.

For voter Jackie McGillicuddy, the two override questions represented a fiscal overreach in a time of belt-tightening.

“I voted no because of the economy, the rental situation — I rent out my cottage and I only had one rental for the whole summer,” she said. “Gas is sky high and everything is going up but your paycheck.”

Former town selectman Kerry Scott arrived just before the polls closed at 7 p.m. to register her “resounding no” to both questions.

“I don’t think we know where we are financially,” she said. “We’re in an absolute shambles financially and that’s why I’m voting no, because I don’t have any confidence.”

To selectman Walter Vail who was voted into office at the annual town election in April, the outcome yesterday came as little shock.

“I’m just not surprised,” he said. “It was what I was hearing around town.”

The cash-strapped town has been without a finance director since last October and has been contracting for its accounting work for the past few months with money that will be now be cut from the 2012 budget. It’s one area of the budget where Mr. Vail is uncomfortable cutting back.

“I want a finance director,” he said. “We’re going to have to get the money from somewhere else but I don’t know how tight the 2012 budget is.”

Mr. Vail said his board had a lot of work to do.

“The town government doesn’t look good right now. People are not happy and I heard about it today.”