EDITORIAL WORKING FOR PEANUTS BUDGET TREATS RESIDENTS WORSE THAN ANIMALS.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's $6.7 billion spending plan for next fiscal year comes with a promise of little new other than a few more cops on the streets in exchange for a trash-fee hike.

The three elephants at the zoo did better, getting $39 million for a new home.

What's shocking about the city budget is that there's 11 percent more revenue - $600 million more - than the current budget year, thanks to soaring tax revenue. So what new and great programs or services will the public get for its money?

Peanuts, really, which the elephants might like, but the human denizens have a right to expect more.

With all that extra revenue (plus the $47 million in savings from the mayor's cost-cutting and efficiency efforts), it seems like there might be a little extra this year. There isn't.

And unless Villaraigosa actually lives up to his promise to get tough with the overindulged City Hall unions and keep the total increase in payroll and benefit costs below the rate of inflation, there won't be any money to solve the city's problems next year or anytime soon.

As always, Villaraigosa talks a good game, but his budget dance looks a lot like the smoke-and-mirrors deceits of his failed predecessor in the Mayor's Office.

It's a basic one-two step - revenue goes up, service goes down. The revenue increases get more than absorbed by the costs of payroll and benefits for city staffers. There nothing left for service. Worse, there's apparently even less, thus a massive hike in trash fees is sought to hire some badly needed cops.

Voters are tired of this never-ending tango. It's time the taxpaying public was treated better than the animals at the zoo.