On Tuesday the town of Oak Bluffs will ask exhausted voters once more to come out to exercise their civic duty at a special town meeting. This time voters will be asked to transfer over $216,000 to cover the current fiscal year budget shortfalls including $106,000 from the town’s so-called “rainy day” fund to cover unforeseen health insurance costs.

“It was health insurance that could not have been predicted,” board of selectman chairman Kathy Burton said at Tuesday’s selectmen’s meeting. “People change health care plans. How can you predict that?”

The special town meeting will take place at 7 p.m. at the Oak Bluffs School.

Selectman Walter Vail on Tuesday grilled town administrator Michael Dutton about the first article of the six-article warrant, which calls for the transfers. Mr. Dutton has said that the unexpected year-end bill came about from town employees changing plans and adding family members to the town’s health insurance rolls. The town offers plans from Blue Cross and Harvard Pilgrim. Employees pay for 25 per cent of the cost of coverage and the town pays the other 75 per cent.

“Back in March you probably could have seen some of that coming, if not all of it,” said Mr. Vail, who wondered why the shortfall was not addressed at the annual town meeting.

In May Mr. Dutton estimated that the town would need to transfer nearly $180,000 from the stabilization fund to cover the costs, a figure that, in retrospect, Mr. Vail questioned.

“You and I have talked about this, Michael, that you said it was a lot higher than this, and I don’t know how it goes from a lot higher [$180,000] to a lot lower [$106,000] without some major changes in a two-month span,” he said. “Somehow we probably should have done this in March. I mean, it’s not that hard to budget health insurance premium cost from July 1 to June 30 of this fiscal year. I recognize there are changes plus or minus, but it just seemed like this was a big deal and a lot of money and I’m sure the public is going to ask the same question.”

Mr. Dutton explained that he had decided to wait until the end of the fiscal year to allow department heads to find possible savings in their budgets that would minimize the impact to the town’s stabilization fund.

“We knew we’d have to do an end-of-the-year transfer, so better to wait and try to use as much savings as the department heads could give us,” he said.

If the $106,000 transfer from the rainy day fund is approved, Mr. Dutton said that there will still be $1 million in the fund, but Mr. Vail worried about what impact the continual dipping into the stabilization fund would have on the town’s bond rating.

“This is what the Department of Revenue wants us to do,” replied Mr. Dutton.

“All I’m trying to do is anticipate the sort of questions we’re going to get,” said Mr. Vail. “We better have answers. Really good answers.”

As for the rest of the transfers Ms. Burton characterized them as routine end-of-the-year budgetary housekeeping.

This is the second special town meeting in Oak Bluffs this year. At the first, in February, voters were asked to cut nearly a quarter million dollars from the fiscal year 2011 budget at the request of the state department of revenue after the town’s revenue did not match up with projections. Along with an annual town meeting in April and a controversial override special election last month, Oak Bluffs voters certainly have been the busiest of the six Island towns this year.

Also on the warrant is a technical vote to appropriate $3,000 to purchase easements for the construction of the proposed roundabout at the four-way blinker intersection. The town does not expect to have to purchase any easements; the vote is the formal, final step in a project that selectmen approved earlier this year. On Wednesday West Tisbury voted to refer the project to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (see story on Page Two).

Other articles on the special town meeting warrant include one that asks voters to, in effect, confirm the town meeting vote in April to expand the Cottage City Historic District to include the Denniston House, another to see whether the town of Oak Bluffs will join the Dukes County integrated pest management program and finally a petitioned article to raise and appropriate $34,000 to purchase a surf rake to clean town beaches.