What a frustrating place to live. We're building new houses, new stores, new office parks. Victor has grown so much that it's considering building a recreation center.

You'd think Monroe County itself was growing.

But then there are the other signs: The Catholic diocese is closing 13 schools, including all but one of its remaining city schools. Irondequoit's Medley Centre is practically empty. The US Postal Service is downsizing, merging some of its post offices.

And there was this recent headline in the Democrat and Chronicle: "Suburbs tackle decrepit houses; once confined to the city, vacant dwellings now more prevalent in inner-ring towns."

A big factor in all of those developments: suburban sprawl. And Monroe County, as former Mayor Bill Johnson continues to preach, has the worst kind of sprawl: sprawl with no population growth. But because each one of our little towns and villages gets to decide how its land will be used, regardless of the impact on its neighbors, we romp merrily on, abandoning schools, recreation facilities, houses, office buildings, stores.

We still have to maintain the roads and sewers and police the neighborhoods in the older communities. And in the outlying towns, the demands on government increase. If you want to know why your property taxes are going up, look here.

Johnson, who lost his 2003 campaign for county executive in large part because of his pronouncements about regional planning and government consolidation, is continuing to push the message. On a snowy night late last month, Johnson was in Riverton, talking to a combined meeting of the Brighton, Henrietta, Rush, and Mendon Democratic Committees.

There's not a bat's chance that Monrovians will wake up tomorrow, see the light, and embrace regional planning or government consolidation. But Johnson finds a bit of hope in the committee that Eliot Spitzer appointed to study ways to reduce the number and cost of New York's local government.

The committee's 15 members include both Johnson and Brighton Town Supervisor Sandy Frankel, who was also a speaker at the southside Dems' meeting.

The committee is supposed to submit a report by April 15, and while Johnson cautions that it probably won't call for "sweeping reform like some of us would like there to be," he thinks it will contain strong recommendations.

"I think people are going to be surprised," he says.

And Spitzer seems committed to following through, Johnson says.

Spitzer can't dictate change, of course. And any suggestion about consolidating governments will be met with howls from local politicians and the delusionals who think consolidation is a Commie plot.

Frankel thinks that the state could offer carrots and sticks. It could offer incentives for government or service consolidation, for instance. And it could refuse to fund road construction that encourages sprawl.

While there is still "a lot of resistance to changing," says Johnson, in some parts of the state, local governments are beginning to talk about major reform. In the Southern Tier, there's talk about consolidating school districts, about merging towns and villages. Officials in Genesee, Livingston, Orleans, and Wyoming Counties are looking for ways to merge services.

Maybe, says Johnson, we could start with "demonstration programs," with the state providing incentives for major reform in a few areas of the state, letting them lead the way.

It'll be interesting to see how big a splash the committee's report makes. I worry that the governor and the state legislators will have so much on their plate that any call for change will be too controversial, too tough.

But like Johnson, I can't think of anything more important for the future of this region than regional land-use planning and consolidating some of our little bitty governments.

Spitzer, says Johnson, "needs to make this a top priority, because the revitalization of Upstate New York cannot be successful without drastic reforms."