ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : County Will Pay $20 Million on Tax District Bonds Due Today : Debt: Creditors hail news but keep pressing for long-term repayment plan. Meanwhile, a missed $8,700 payment sinks small Laguna Beach offering into default.

In a move hailed as a positive sign for the holders of Orange County bonds, the county said Tuesday that it will pay $20.3 million due today on bonds sold by 10 special tax districts in South County.

“It’s a step in the right direction. It’s terrific,” said Cathy Bando, an investment banker advising the county creditors committee, which includes bondholders. “But we’re still pressing for a long-term debt repayment plan.”

The county’s creditors, some of whom will be meeting today with William J. Popejoy, the county’s new chief executive officer, have become alarmed in recent weeks because while the county has made payments on most of its bonds since the bankruptcy, it has developed no long-term payment plan and waits until the last minute each month to pay its bond bills. More than $1 billion is due to bondholders this summer.

The bonds the county will make good on are from Mello-Roos districts formed in such areas as Rancho Santa Margarita, Coto de Caza and Mission Viejo. Homeowners in the districts pay an extra levy called a Mello-Roos tax to fund new roads, schools and other infrastructure improvements.

“This should be read as a good sign for bondholders,” said the county’s bankruptcy attorney Bruce Bennett. “It’s significant that when the county has the capacity to pay its debt, it’s paying.”

In other developments:

* While the county is making good on its Mello-Roos debt, it has missed a $8,700 payment that was due Jan. 2 on a small Laguna Beach bond issue, plunging the bonds into default. The $797,000 assessment bond issue was sold in 1986 to improve sewer lines in the Top of the World area of Laguna Beach. In the confusion since the bankruptcy, the county failed to make the semiannual payment on those bonds, said Win Sue, a senior accountant in the Orange County treasurer-tax collector’s office.

* The city of Laguna Beach is preparing to sell $1 million in sewer bonds, the first test of the municipal bond market by an Orange County issuer since the county’s Dec. 6 bankruptcy filing.

Officials said that in order to pay its $20.3 million in Mello-Roos debt, the county will use $19.8 million in tax revenue collected from the 10 districts since the bankruptcy. The remaining $500,000 will come from interest earned from bond reserve accounts, said Bill Castro, a county public finance official.

Castro acknowledged that by using the interest money to make the payments, the county will slip into “technical default” on bonds sold by the South Orange County Public Financing Authority. But Castro stressed that the default does not involve money owed bondholders, who will be paid all their interest on time, he said.

Castro said the county had to tap the interest money because the Mello-Roos districts didn’t generate enough tax revenue since Dec. 6 to cover all the interest payments.

Rod Speer, a county spokesman, said the action does not affect the status of several Mello-Roos-funded school and road projects that might be delayed because of the county bankruptcy.

In the troubled Top of the World bond issue, Orange County, as paying agent for the bonds, is responsible for collecting the assessments and cutting checks to pay principal and interest to bondholders.

The bonds are paid off from assessments levied on homeowners in the district. Although the county received the assessment payments due from property owners in December, it failed to make the semiannual $8,700 payment, Sue said.

“We’ve had some complaints from bondholders,” Sue said. “And this money has been sitting in these accounts since December. But we can’t make the payments till the lawyers tell us what to do.”

John Abbott, a lawyer for the county, said he was looking into the matter. He said that as far as he knew, this is the first and only default by the county.