EDITORIAL : BOND BALLOT BONANZA; COUNCIL AND MAYOR PLAY PUBLIC FOR FOOLS.

IF you paid someone to build your dream home and the person stopped construction halfway through, would you fork over more cash to finish the job?

Not unless you're a sucker for a sob story.

But that's exactly what voters are getting from Mayor Richard Riordan and the Los Angeles City Council - a sob story for suckers.

The council wants to place $1 billion in property and parcel tax hikes on the November ballot, asking residents to pay more for services they haven't received over the years, like safe sidewalks.

The city is pleading poverty.

In most communities in the United States, providing well-maintained streets, sewers and sidewalks, building adequate police and fire stations and providing safe parks and good libraries are considered basic city services.

In L.A., they're unnecessary frills for the little people.

The City of Angels has far more pressing needs - like putting everyone who ever worked on a council campaign on the city payroll and playing ``Wheel of Fortune'' for public employee pay raises and benefit improvements.

The city can't possibly pay for basic city services until all the council members have been given hefty pay raises, along with generous pensions, staff cars, cell phones, plush offices and private elevators.

So now the city has a plethora of tiny problems, like 200,000 crumbling and cracking sidewalks that generate $4 million in lawsuits every year against the city.

Then, there's the aging water mains and sewage pipes that burst and the broken-up streets and trees untrimmed and . . .

Oops! Guess it's time to ask the little people, the ones who pay the bills, for more money since the city has squandered its last penny on everything but the basics.

How many straws does it take to break the back of the average taxpayer?

Will the $769.4 million tax hike for sidewalk repairs push people over the edge, or will the $94.1 million for renovating the city zoo and building an aquarium in Exposition Park be too much to bear?

And then there's the $178 million library measure request.

All are worthy enough causes. All are services the city should be providing mainly out its $4 billion general fund budget.

But council members, who now make more than $100,000 each annually, don't like making those weighty political decisions.

They want you, the voter and taxpayer, to decide to tax yourselves an additional $31 a year for 20 years on the average home because they don't have the nerve to chop the fat off a bloated city budget.

Riordan and his 15 back-seat drivers on the council have washed their hands of their sworn responsibility to look after the people's money. ``Let the voters decide for themselves'' is their oft-repeated line of irresponsibility.

Now it's the public's turn to do some fiscal cleansing.

Voters don't need charter reform as much as they need to exercise the power of the ballot box to send a loud message to City Hall in November.

The council has squandered money for 25 years while the city has rotted. And now they come to taxpayers without making the slightest commitment toward cutting spending, enacting a clear debt policy, or making a commitment to righting past wrongs and completing work that was promised in past bond measures but never completed.

If you let the city sucker you on this one, you have no one to blame but yourself.

And remember this: They've got $1 billion or $2 billion in other tax hikes just ready to put before you next year.