EDITORIAL ANOTHER FAILURE ANGELENOS PAY FOR PARKS, GET BUREAUCRATIC WASTE.

IT was six years ago, in 1996, that Los Angeles voters voluntarily agreed to higher property taxes in exchange for better city parks.

It was three years later, in 1999, that some of those funds found their way to North Hollywood, in the form of a $1.8 million project to convert a former police station into the North Hollywood Multi-Purpose Center, a facility for youth and seniors.

Another three years later, there's still no center.

Only now has D&M Construction, the West Hills contractor tapped for the project, finally been paid - as part of a settlement in a lawsuit alleging public mismanagement in City Hall.

It's another ``only in Los Angeles'' story: Contractor takes city project; contractor gets frustrated by city bureaucracy; contractor discontinues work; contractor gets paid.

Project remains incomplete.

As usual, it's the public that gets the short end of the stick, paying for a project that now, six years after the approval of Proposition K, is less than half finished.

Worse yet, the North Hollywood facility was allowed to sit idle and exposed to the elements during the entire time D&M and city leaders wrangled in court and hammered out a settlement. As a result of the damage, some of D&M's work must be redone.

But having blown its dough on mismanagement, legal fees and the settlement, City Hall lacks the funds to complete the center at all. City officials are busily scrambling for ways to come up with some extra cash or else scale back the project. Without the funds to finish the construction, it's unclear when, if ever, North Hollywood seniors and teens will get the facility that Valley tax dollars have financed.

And the residents of North Hollywood aren't alone.

The City Council's settlement with D&M also covers a second bungled project in Venice. In total, contractors have filed more than a dozen Proposition K-related lawsuits against the city, which are likely to ring up more expensive settlements. A Department of Recreation and Parks internal report finds that more than 20 percent of Proposition K projects were insufficiently funded.

In fact, Recreation and Parks so badly botched the bond that the city turned over its management to the Bureau of Engineering earlier this summer.

The full extent of the department's incompetence will soon be documented for all to see when City Controller Laura Chick delivers what promises to be sobering reading: an audit of its performance.

Then, in black and white, L.A. voters will have yet one more reminder that theirs is a city with lofty promises and loftier taxes, but invariably lackluster results.

Can't we do any better than this? Since these kind of wasteful fiascoes occur all the, it's clear we can't. The reason is simple: No one is ever held accountable so the incompetents keep on messing up one project after another.