Think the NYPD is really going to slash city parade routes by 25 percent?

Or that Gov. Paterson will actually close 41 state parks and 14 historic sites, and cut services at 24 more?

Must be the start of New York’s annual budget kabuki dances — where the music only stops when taxpayers get hit with even higher state and city levies.

The technique is quite simple: “Target” a massively popular, highly visible public service for extinction, and let the resulting outcry soften folks up for tax hikes.

It’s why someone — often the mayor — proposes closing libraries virtually every year.

Wouldn’t it be better to cut spending by boiling lard out of the public workforce?

Turns out, the money involved in the park cuts is quite small — $6 million a year, out of an $8.2 billion state budget deficit. (On the city level, the parade trims should save around $3 million.)

By contrast, the 4 percent pay hike that unionized state workers are in line for next year (after a 3 percent raise this year) will cost taxpayers $222 million.

Roll that hike back by one-tenth of a percentage point — and save the parks!

To be sure, closing an $8.2 billion deficit requires cuts all around. Indeed, Paterson has already said he also wants the full $222 million in employee “givebacks” as part of his deficit-closing plan.

But given the unions’ power in Albany, don’t count on that happening.

Odds are the parks funding will be restored and the unions made whole — with another giant tax increase.

It’s the New York way.