At the Oak Bluffs selectmen’s meeting on Wednesday night, where for months an empty chair has sat next to the board, Robert Whritenour took in the spectacle. It has been a whirlwind three days for the interim town administrator who has stepped into his new job just as the latest painful round of budget cutting, and acrimony, begins. Wednesday’s meeting was classic Oak Bluffs with outspoken, passionate and sometimes testy exchanges.

And Mr. Whritenour relished every minute of it.

“It was great for me,” he said on Thursday in an interview in his new office. “The one thing that I was really struck by was that was a very special group of people you had assembled last evening. The eloquence of some of the speakers, people even in their 80s, that just get up and dress you down and are right on the money. It was very impressive.”

Mr. Whritenour comes to the job from Falmouth, where he served for 10 years as the town manager and where he still lives, commuting to the Island every morning on the 7 a.m. ferry. But he is no stranger to the Island. Since 1995 he has participated in the Martha’s Vineyard Rod and Gun Club’s flyrod catch-and-release striped bass tournament. And like any self-respecting sportsman, he won’t divulge his favorite fishing spot.

For now he has been called on to serve for 13 weeks while the town searches for a permanent replacement for former town administrator Michael Dutton, who resigned under pressure this summer.

“If I’m here for just the short-term I still want to have a lasting impact on the finances and the sustainability of the town,” he said.

Already the job has held surprises for Mr. Whritenour, who said he had never seen an Island state aid balance sheet.

“I am critically shocked — I’ve never seen this and this is absolutely incredible to me,” he said as he excitedly pulled out a spreadsheet he had compiled. “Let me show you what’s going on out here with state revenues. I just can’t get over this.”

Mr. Whritenour said communities similar in size to Oak Bluffs across the commonwealth typically depend on receiving 25, 35 or even 40 per cent of their revenue from state aid. In fiscal year 2011 the difference between state offsets and assessments and state aid to the town was $55,794.

“The Cape has the same problem but not as dramatic,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen it work out to be a net drain.”

The reason for the unusual figures is the state’s formula for distributing aid.

“What they do is they take your year-round population and they divide it by the sum total of the value of all the properties in town and they come up with this astronomical figure that makes us all look like millionaires,” he said. “Out here on the Island you’re forced to be completely self-sufficient. It makes the problems a little harder to solve.”

To solve those problems Mr. Whritenour, however long his tenure lasts, hopes to leave the town with a firmer grasp of its financial footing.

“It’s that idea of measure twice and cut once,” he said. “I hope we don’t have a situation where we have to have a series of town meetings to continue cutting the budget.”

He said he believes he gave Falmouth a strong financial foundation and trumpets his time there despite a rocky finale that included a public clash with town selectmen.

“I was there for 10 years and, you know, everyone talks about that last bit of it when there was a lot of politics and things like that, but I had a very successful tenure in Falmouth,” he said. “I left that budget in an extremely sustainable condition. I think they’re particularly well-poised to rebound from the recession and increase their services as the revenues begin to pick up.”

Mr. Whritenour also pursued an aggressive renewable energy agenda as town manager, replacing pumps at the town water department with variable-speed pumps, switching traffic lights to LED lighting, and constructing two massive wind turbines on town property. The push was motivated in equal parts by environmental and financial considerations.

“We saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just in direct energy costs,” he said. “It’s paid off tremendously. I met all of the 2020 goals of Falmouth’s climate action plan by 2010. So I made them do a new plan.”

He said his love of public service was ingrained in him while growing up in Providence, R.I. with parents who were public servants themselves. Mr. Whritenour’s father was a principal planner for the state of Rhode Island. His mother was an educator at the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.

“Growing up surrounded by that ethic I always had a very strong respect for public service and when I went to college I really just gravitated towards it,” he said. “I was very moved by the ability to work with local government to help the quality of life in communities and make a difference. It would be nice if more people geared themselves toward that.”