Every few years, a couple of north country school districts start talking about consolidation.

They waste their breath. It will never happen.

Charles Bohlen, the former superintendent of the Jefferson-Lewis BOCES, always blamed basketball.

Parents, he said, want their children to play on a varsity team. By keeping the number of school districts high — and thus, student body sizes low — more kids have a chance to be a varsity athlete.

And what parent wouldn't be willing to pay higher taxes for that?

Last month, Gov. Eliot Spitzer formed the Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness to cut through the Gordian Knot of 4,200 taxing jurisdictions and 6,900 special districts. Spitzer said all this government "has led to a significant degree of overlap in public services, which has had a devastating effect on tax burdens. Something has to be done."

That something won't amount to much. The usual suspects will be rounded up, and then all let go because, as they say at the Grand Ole Opry, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

We like our turf.

Former Jefferson County Emergency Management Director Greg Brunelle constantly talked about the need to consolidate fire departments. But he was always stymied by the first question asked by our first responders: Whose logo is going to be on the truck, ours or theirs?

We really like our turf.

We like our turf so much that the first $4 million raised in school taxes in the three-county region goes to pay the salaries and benefits of 33 superintendents, whose primary job is to follow the same state and federal mandates 33 times.

To ensure reiteration, we elect around 230 school board members so they can vote on the same state and federal mandates 33 times. The only unique feature our boards bring to the table is wildly divergent student codes of ethics, some preferring one-stike-and-you're-out rules and others embracing three-stikes-and-let's-think-about-it rules.

So relentless is our desire to maintain 400-pupil school districts that our boards are filled with members whose spouses are on district payrolls, usually as teachers. And because school board members serve without pay, they have convinced themselves there is nothing ethically wrong with voting to increase a loved one's salary.

What do they think this is, the World Bank?

We really, really like our turf.

We want our governments small and ineffective. Thus, we allow the town of LeRay to make every decision involving roads, zoning, construction, etc., connected to the growth of Fort Drum, one of the most significant commercial and residential expansions going on in New York right now.

And yet this is the same town whose leaders were shocked — shocked, I tell you! — to learn they had inadvertently allowed the formerly staid, after-dinner-mint Renaissance Restaurant to reopen as the throbbing, cut-ya-in-the-chest Club Renaissance.

(Seriously, if you have trouble keeping track of one simple request involving one simple building, how can you be expected to keep up with various proposals involving hundreds of units being crafted by several titans of development from around the country?)

Actually, we love our turf.

The town of Watertown will buy anything from the City of Watertown to give the appearance of urban living — without the taxes — to its residents. But the town's growth cycle has been so steep in the last five years that it has been popped by the state for robbing Peter to pay Paul for its expanding water districts.

So jaded is the town in trying to avoid paying for its own existence that it once sent sewer bills to the former Niagara Mohawk because, alas, the utility had poles and transmission lines in town. The utility had to go to court to stop the madness, as the town was unwilling to accept the premise that the transmission of electricity and natural gas doesn't require sewage treatment.

In the coming years the towns of Cape Vincent, Clayton, Orleans and Lyme will each have a unique wind turbine policy, ensuring that whatever the future brings for alternative energy in Jefferson County, it will be hodgepodge.

Taxpayers will keep footing the running tab for BOCES negotiators, who instead of preparing one contract every three years for teachers in each county, must provide 24/7 coverage because with 33 districts somebody's contract is about to expire every 18 minutes.

Some towns will contine to elect assessors and some will appoint them. Assessors along the river will continue to assess property differently than those along the lake.

(And don't forget this important safety tip: Depending on the assessor, tearing down a cottage and putting up a $250,000 replacement could cost you more in taxes than gutting the cottage — but keeping the walls — and putting in $300,000 worth of improvements.)

And just to show that it's not only about adults, when a new housing development is opened on the north side of the city in the next few years, kids who could walk three blocks to North Elementary School will be bused for miles through the city and out to Brownville because, damn it, "no child left behind" actually means no school district lines can ever be altered.

Go for it, Gov. Spitzer. But you are spitting in the wind.

Bob Gorman is the managing editor of the Times.