It’s a case of deja vu all over again as San Juan County’s financial team has set its sights on borrowing money from the Land Bank in order to bail out the cash-starved solid-waste operation.

This time around, however, county officials are also banking on a balancing act that calls borrowing up to $800,000 from the Department of Public Works’ Equipment Rental and Revolving Fund as a means keeping the Road Fund in the black and to help pay for whatever construction or maintenance projects the road fund would be unable to finance over the next 15 months.

Road and solid waste are not alone.

In fact, Auditor Milene Henley last week told the County Council that of 23 separate funds maintained by the county there are six that are either presently in the red, including solid waste and the county’s capital improvement account, or, in the case of the Road Fund, are likely to be by the end of the year. She noted a recent reprimand by the state auditor’s office in pressing the council to endorse a plan which relies largely on “inter-fund loans” to erase the “negative balances” of those cash-strapped funds by the end of the year.

It’s the second time in two years the council has been forced to consider borrowing money from the Land Bank’s Stewardship Fund, an endowment and investment account that in 2009 totaled roughly $3.5 million, as a means of covering the bottom line of an unrelated department.

In a split decision, the borrowing plan presented by the county finance committee, which consists of the administrator, auditor and treasurer, failed to gain the council’s approval. Councilman Gene Knapp, East Orcas, a former Land Bank commissioner, objected to pursuing the stewardship fund as a loan source and abstained from voting on the committee’s plan. Knapp noted that the prosecuting attorney has yet to determine whether the use of Land Bank revenue for anything other than for the acquisition, preservation or maintenance of conservation land would be legal.

Though they agreed that the committee’s financial plan has merit, councilmen Bob Myhr, Lopez/Shaw, and Howie Rosenfeld, Friday Harbor, voted against it. Council Chairman Richard Fralick, Orcas West, and Councilwoman Lovel Pratt voted for the plan, which, in a 2-2-1 decision, failed to gain a sufficient number of votes. (Councilman Rich Peterson was absent at the time of the vote).

Though it failed to gain the council’s direct support, Henley said the finance committee will continue to work out the details of the plan, such as identifying the means that any inter-fund loan would be repaid, negotiating with Land Bank officials, and then present the council with a recommendation based on that borrowing plan in the near future.

“I think it’s kind of sad that you can’t come to an agreement on something as simple as this,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter … we’re going to do it anyway.”