The Bangor Village Board was scheduled to hold a budget hearing on Dec. 1 to finalize the village’s 2010 budget. Unfortunately for taxpayers who want to pay their tax bills soon, only two board members — trustee Kristy O’Heron and interim Village President Greg Peterson — attended the meeting.

Four other trustees — Kimberly Shrake, Eric Vaughn, Chris Robertson and David Sampson — were absent. The board was already short one member because of Village President Rob Gjertsen’s death last month.

“We needed at least four members to show up for a quorum,” said Village Clerk Shelly Miller.

According to Peterson, the members who did not attend told him they’d either forgotten about the meeting or hadn’t received a reminder call.

Regardless of the reasons for failing to attain a quorum, the meeting had to be rescheduled, which will lead to a two-week delay in sending out tax bills. Since a 15-day notice is required by law, the next budget hearing is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 18.

Assuming a budget is approved at that time, Miller will run the numbers down to the La Crosse County Zoning, Planning and Land Information office on Monday morning, Dec. 21.

According to Miller, it usually takes the county a couple of days to process those numbers. However, a call to Director Jeff Bluske confirmed that his office will do their best to speed up the process.

“If we can get those numbers right away on Monday morning, we should be able to get them back to Shelly as early as that afternoon,” Bluske said.

Although his office does its best to accommodate municipalities facing end-of-year tax crunches, Bluske noted that Holmen is also dealing with some last-minute tax issues with the state, which could impact how fast his office turns around Bangor’s numbers.

Still, he said he believed that Miller could get Bangor’s final tax numbers by Tuesday morning at the outside.

Miller said that even with help, it usually takes her a couple days to get all the tax bills mailed out after the county sends them back to her. That will likely mean many, if not most, Bangor taxpayers will get their physical bills after Christmas.

“It can get pretty hectic this time of year,” Miller said on Monday. “A lot of people go south to places like Florida and they want to pay their tax bill before they go — I’ve got five notes from last Friday from people wondering about their bills.”

Asked what would happen if someone wants to pay their taxes but does not have a physical bill yet, Miller said one option is to go to the county Web site.

“We can access that from here and at least let people know what they owe,” she said.