With a trying fiscal year 2011 behind it, the town of Oak Bluffs must now grapple with a fiscal year 2012 budget that looks increasingly unsound. Selectman and board chairman Kathy Burton said the town was looking to make up a shortfall of around $300,000 in its 2012 budget based on revenue projections, and everything was on the table at a Thursday morning brainstorming session with department heads and representatives from town committees.

Armed with a marker and easel at the cramped, specially-scheduled meeting in the town wastewater building, Ms. Burton tallied a variety of different revenue-generating and expenditure-slashing possibilities for the town.

“Most of the money in the budget is for personnel costs,” said finance committee member Steve Auerbach. Mr. Auerbach recommended that the town look at eliminating nonessential personnel in a variety of departments including the council on aging, the Oak Bluffs School, the police department and the town library.

“I’m a big fan of the library but I don’t see how we can afford to hire a reference librarian given our fiscal situation,” he said. “And between schools and police it’s almost two-thirds of the budget.”

Renee Balter, a member of an ad hoc town finance committee, agreed that personnel cuts were necessary

“At the risk of becoming very unpopular I think we should look at the council on aging,” she said.

“Licenses, fees and fines — I think a lot of things we already have in place are just not being enforced,” offered selectman Gail Barmakian. “The revenue is there.”

Other suggestions included selling excess town property as well as taking over and selling properties with excessive back taxes. Ms. Barmakian estimated that the town was owed several million dollars in back taxes.

“Land or land with homes where people have not paid their taxes where we’ve been attempting to collect and have been more than patient, at a certain point in time it’s essentially a foreclosure by the town,” said Ms. Burton.

More long-term revenue generating sources proposed included negotiating payments in lieu of taxes with the many nonprofits who make their home in Oak Bluffs, putting taxi parking spots out to bid, creating a town-run fueling station at the harbor, selling T-shirts and souvenirs and starting a town thrift store. Finance committee member Mimi Davisson proposed draconian hikes in parking ticket fees.

“I mean make it really, really onerous,” she said. Overtime parking fees are currently $20. State law allows a $50 maximum penalty.

And the sharp budget cuts won’t just affect Oak Bluffs human residents. At Tuesday’s selectmen’s meeting, police chief Erik Blake discussed the new problems posed by loose dogs and cats after voters shot down funding for the town animal control officer in May.

“The police department is still going to respond to anything that’s criminal in nature: dogfighting, cruelty and vicious dogs on the loose,” the chief said. But he said the department would be unable to respond to complaints of loose dogs and cats, as well as calls about restrained dogs whose owners are unknown.

“I received an e-mail from Duncan Ross who said he could see if the Animal Shelter could respond if someone did have a restrained dog,” said Mr. Blake. “That should cover 90 per cent of the public policy. For barking dogs and disturbing the peace we’ll show up but there are some loose ends that may fall through the cracks that will take us awhile to adjust.”

Mr. Blake also said that the police would be reluctant to transport injured animals to the vet if their owner could not be found.

“If it’s a traffic problem and there’s an injured dog we’d try to find the owner because whoever brings the dog to the vet has to pay for it,” he said. “We don’t even have money to buy dog food to feed the dog, much less pay for a hospital bill. We called around to see if vets would come to the scene and basically they said for liability and for cost reasons they won’t.”

Mr. Blake said that the town receives about 200 animal control calls a year, most about lost pets.

Selectman Gail Barmakian said that she had contacted Tisbury town administrator John Bugbee about the possibility of some mutual aid on animal control matters. She said she believes Tisbury is currently looking to hiring a part-time additional animal control officer.

“There may be a possibility to share that employee with us,” Ms. Barmakian said. “We would obviously contribute to that salary and the number was around $16,000.”

Selectmen also appointed Rene Ben David and James J. Dorsey to the harbor advisory and management committee and William Alwardt to the shellfish department.

They went into executive session at the close of the meeting to discuss collective bargaining and did not reconvene in public.