EDITORIAL PARKER'S PRICE TAG NEW POLICE HEADQUARTERS WILL COST TAXPAYERS PLENTY, WHILE OFFERING THEM VERY LITTLE.

THE projected cost for replacing the Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters at Parker Center keeps getting more expensive, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone in City Hall.

Back in January, estimates for the project, which originally fell somewhere between $150 million and $190 million, were raised to the $215 million to $285 million range.

And now the City Council has decided that before it can even build a new police headquarters, it must buy a 450,000- to 500,000-square-foot facility to serve as a temporary headquarters during the move.

Cost: $20 million to $30 million.

At the end of the day, the price tag for new Police Chief William Bratton's headquarters could top that of city government's last monument to itself, the $300 million renovation of City Hall.

Clearly, no thought has been given to making Parker Center work a while longer until a bond issue could be put before voters.

Clearly, no thought has been given to the impact on public services by raiding the general fund to pay for these bills.

City leaders, mindful that theirs is an ever-expanding bureaucracy and protective of their creature comforts, have plans to move more city workers into the temporary site after the LAPD gets its new headquarters.

This is all in the public's best interest, they say, because once the bureaucrats can move into the new building, City Hall will no longer have to shell out the millions a year it currently spends housing employees who don't fit in the many downtown buildings already in City Hall's real-estate portfolio.

Maybe, but if the past is any indication, when city government obtains more office space, it usually ends up needing every square inch just to keep up with its own growth.

If there's one axiomatic truth in L.A. City Hall, it's that the bureaucracy continues to grow, and that city workers will always enjoy nothing but the best.

Thus the ``need'' for a new Parker Center in the first place. Of course the LAPD needs safe and adequate facilities. Nobody would argue with that.

But the old building seems to have functioned just fine for decades, and when federal funding was available after the Northridge Earthquake, city officials spent it renovating their own palace.

Yet now, in the midst of a budget crisis, all of L.A. officialdom is convinced that Parker Center must be demolished and replaced immediately with a lavish new building that will help their tax-subsidized developer pals cash in more quickly on Skid Row redevelopment.

Never mind that Bratton hasn't yet reorganized the department, or that no one has even looked into the possibility of decentralizing the LAPD's operations altogether, thus eliminating the need for a single, massive headquarters.

For city leaders, it goes without saying that city government belongs downtown. Their concern isn't L.A.'s neighborhoods, it's about building the downtown of their dreams, and taking good care of the privileged classes.

When all is said and done, downtown will have one more pricey landmark, and city residents will have lost some $300 million intended for public services.