After months of wrangling, it appears the decade-long battle between the Catskill Mountain Railroad and trail enthusiasts over extension of the railroad toward the Ashokan Reservoir may come to resolution, not in years or months, but in a few weeks.

Well, kiss my caboose!

U&D Corridor Committee Chairman Jeff Collins, D-Woodstock, is calling a special session of his seven-member special committee on Thursday at the inconvenient hour of 2 p.m. at the County Office Building. Two hours later, Collins has scheduled a meeting with the legislature’s Housing and Transportation Committee for its consideration. The full legislature could vote on the transportation committee’s recommendation at its May 20 regular meeting.

Recall, it was Collins who said he didn’t want to “railroad” this process.

I can assure readers that whenever government embarks on a fast track like this, something stinks.

Certainly, that’s CMRR’s suspicion. Railroad supporters contend the “Collins plan” is 95 percent loaded in trail backers’ favor. As for trail supporters, they’ve never made any secret about their abhorrence to a noisy, polluting train running through their pristine wilderness.

It’s a pity these trail folks weren’t around a century ago when railroads were the economic lifelines of the Catskills.

Whose Boat Club Is It Anyway?

There’s an old saying in Tivoli, which I just made up: You can take the boy out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of the boy.

I refer here to former Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-Catskill, casting his lot with the Red Hook Boat Club over the town’s efforts to acquire the facility, by force, if necessary, as a municipal marina.

Before anyone says something like “who cares about boats in Red Hook or Marc Molinaro,” consider this:

Pleasure-boating on our beautiful Hudson River is huge. Almost all of the marinas are privately owned. If the town of Red Hook pursues plans to take the boat club by eminent domain, who’s next? Rondout, Connelly, Saugerties, Catskill, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh?

Collectively, there may be thousands of boat owners from scores of private clubs on the Hudson with a keen interest in how this turns out.

My bet is on momentum. The town’s 1993 master plan spoke to the advisability of acquiring the boat club for public purpose. Since it took Red Hook that long to get this far, how long will it take for the next phase?

For sure, boat club supporters have friends in Red Hook. The village was festooned with “stop eminent domain” signs this weekend, days after the story broke. A contingent of opponents accused the town board of contemplating “piracy” (a nice turn considering the subject) at the last town board meeting. Arggh!

Molinaro, a former teenage mayor of Tivoli, knows the town like the back of his campaign card. Strongly against town takeover, he suggests that the town consider another site a mile or so upriver at Tivoli Bay. Once the site of the Kingston-Tivoli ferry dock, it offers deep water and access. I think the town is looking more for a “turnkey” operation, like the boat club.

With politicians like Molinaro — he has served as a county legislator, state assemblyman, county executive and congressman — politics is always a factor.

After losing a nasty, expensive re-election bid to Democrat Josh Riley of Ithaca last November, Molinaro secured a nomination from President Trump — whom he avoided during the presidential election — as director of the Federal Transit Administration under the Department of Transportation.

Molinaro has never worked for anyone else during his 30-year career in government. Laboring in obscurity in a vast bureaucracy like the Department of Transportation, regardless of the fat paycheck, may not be his cup of tea. Might this very public return to his roots signal another shot at Congress next year, or is he just homesick?

Dietz Dedication Underwhelming

Being a sap for major events, I motored over to Dietz Stadium in Uptown Kingston on Saturday afternoon for the mayor’s formal dedication of its $27 million makeover.

A beaming Steve Noble served as emcee, but went on much too long as blackening skies portended the deluge.

I counted about 50 people in attendance, about half of them public officials, contractors or those associated with state grants to help finance this magnificent rebuild, the biggest in city history.

Where, I thought, was the public on this auspicious occasion? It’s their dime. The mayor advised that taxpayers (city and school district) will be paying off $20 million in bonds over the next 30 or 40 years.

Given the 30-year useful life expectancy of the stadium, as the mayor pointed out, it could be obsolete before bonds are retired.

I won’t go into all the elected officials who weren’t there, but there were lots of them. They know who they are.

A representative of U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan attended, even though the feds didn’t have a stake in this one. “We were supportive,” he said, when I asked him why he was there.

County Executive Jen Metzger was on hand with a short address. Again, the county had no juice in this one.

A retired engineer spoke to me about the infrastructure that had to be either replaced or updated. “Those are all new lights,” he said, pointing toward the sky. “The old ones were surplus from the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert H. Dietz, 24, was killed in combat in Kirchain, Germany on March 29, 1945, about six weeks before the war in Europe ended. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Truman.

Was this massive public expenditure worth it? I think so. Thousands of children and adults, maybe tens of thousands, will enjoy “the stadium” well into the second half of this century.

And I’ll bet that in time, thousands more will claim they were there for its formal dedication on May 3, 2025.