VALPARAISO | Porter County officials and their tax consultants met Friday afternoon to resolve issues delaying tax bills from being mailed on schedule.

Auditors this week discovered the state's numbers did not include the local homestead tax credit, sending them scrambling to meet deadlines, which are already one week behind schedule.

Last year's tax bill snafu featured a similar error from the state when the homestead tax credit rate was incorrect, but this year it was completely left out of the equation.

Officials, however, were concerned other problems may continue to crop up as the numbers are rectified with state budgets when entered into their new software system.

"If we find problems, they could be fixed quickly, but problems do always come up and I'm not going to say 'send the bills out' if I'm not comfortable with them," Porter County Treasurer Jim Murphy said.

The next step will include inputting the homestead tax credit numbers into the database and then utilizing the new software in the test version first. But all of that takes time.

"According to our calendar, we were supposed to receive the budget order from the state on (Nov. 7), but it's already the 14th and we just got it. We're behind a whole week," Alizabeth Bailey, chief deputy for the auditor's office, said.

Commissioner Bob Harper asked Bailey if she thought the bills would be sent the first week of December as planned.

"I don't think so," she responded.

After the meeting, Bailey and Porter County tax consultant Beth Henkel said they aim to get the bills out as soon as possible, but realistically it will now be the second week of December.

"We're shooting for the end of the year, which means we have to have it done 15 days before that," Henkel said.

But the key is to get it right, she said.

"We want those bills to be right," she said. "We put a lot of effort into this and you don't want to have to pull bills."