Ellenville’s Board of Trustees scheduled an emergency meeting for 5:30 p.m. tonight to address dwindling municipal finances as the village hurtles toward a potential financial abyss.

“We are in a situation now where we cannot afford to let two or three weeks go by between Village Board meetings,” Mayor Evan Trent said in an interview. “And so, we will have a meeting every week as we work to find a way to keep the village operating through June.”

It’s a crisis born decades ago, when village officials first sought to fix a disparity between revenue raised through property taxes and expenditures for basic services such as the village police department, which accounts for about two-thirds of Ellenville’s budget.

For years, the village has avoided default by turning to a variety of short-term solution, including sizeable scoops from the $3.88 million raised in the late 1990s from the sale of Shawangunk Ridge land to the Open Space Institute. This year, the village is pushing for a mandatory referendum that would allow it to spend as much as half the remaining Mountain Money to keep Ellenville afloat through the end of the fiscal year in June.

While Ulster County has promised to make the village whole on its outstanding tax bill, the date on when that will happen has shifted several times, fueling speculation it may not even occur this year.

Meantime, Village Manager Michael Warren is seeking to hire an auction firm to take over the collection of years-old taxes. Auctions International would handle the paperwork for foreclosure auctions and the village would receive proceeds.