I have often wondered what a town meeting would be like if the purpose was to educate the voters so that we can make good decisions. Now, after the Oak Bluffs special town meeting held on Nov. 8, I know.

There were 10 articles before us, the most important of which was number two — a budget reduction in the amount of $303,861. Given an overall town budget of $25.3 million, it seemed a small thing. But it was a teachable event and Bob Whritenour, our interim town administrator, took the best possible advantage of it.

Using a slide presentation (now posted on the town Web site), Mr. Whritenour led us through the systemic budget problems that have plagued Oak Bluffs for many years — “structural deficits” — which are, simply put, spending more than we earn. The solution — eliminate these deficits now so that we can move forward toward a balanced budget in the future. Mr. Whritenour advocated simple fiscal discipline to prevent shortfalls — conservative estimating of both income and expenses. On the income side, 79 per cent of our receipts come from property taxes that are strong, steady and predictable. Only two per cent comes from state aid, which is unpredictable. “We could secede from the commonwealth and it would not cost us much,” Mr. Whritenour joked. Most importantly, 19 per cent of our income comes from local revenues and here, he pointed out, can be found most of our budgeting problems.

“We can attack and beat this problem,” he told us.

He gave us a breakdown of local revenues: $538,553 from motor vehicles, $865,000 from the harbor, $388,000 from rooms and meal taxes which, added together with other receipts, produced a total of $2.8 million. This income, he told us, “is very susceptible to economic fluctuations and hard to estimate.” Last year, we predicted an income from these sources of $3 million. We received less. In fact, we have overestimated receipts in this category for a total of $1.5 million over the past years. A slide showed the trend line for these local revenues as declining after 2009. “We can be optimistic that with an improving economy these revenues will come up,” he told us, “but that would be a mistake.” Instead, we should conservatively predict that the trend line will continue declining into 2012. His advice — if we are going to make mistakes — overestimate our expenses, underestimate our revenues. “In a nutshell,” he said, “that’s it.”

After some discussion, article 2 passed unanimously and the town of Oak Bluffs made a huge step toward fiscal responsibility. Because of these reductions we can set our tax rate and send our tax bills out on time and, perhaps, be the only town on the Island to accomplish this feat.

From my point of view, the Nov. 8 town meeting was very special indeed. For the first time in my memory, we were educated without being talked down to. We were given the facts needed to make decisions and the context within which these facts resided.

My hat is off to Mr. Whritetenour for his professionalism and simple good sense. It is off as well to the new moderator, Jesse Law, who led the discussion efficiently and fairly. And to Kathy Burton, who was open and honest and down-to-earth as chairman. I felt we had attended a human event — and that is no small compliment.

Oh, one more thing — I think we should do our best to make Bob Whritenour our permanent town administrator.

Gazette correspondent Sam Low lives in Oak Bluffs.