Few incidents demonstrate more clearly the continuing conflict between the Catskill Mountain Railroad and government than the exchange between a city alderwoman and the volunteer president of the railroad some 20 years ago before the county legislature.

Kingston Alderwoman Mary Ann Parker addressed the legislature with a complaint about CMRR. The line extended into Parker’s Midtown ward, and she wasn’t happy about the response from its leaders she was getting to questions about its operation.

“I talked to the president of the railroad about some of my concerns, and you know what he said?” she said, her voice rising with indignation. “He told me to go shit in my hat!” How anybody kept a straight face after that one still escapes me.

The next day I called CMRR President Earl Pardini for confirmation. Reprising a scene from “A Few Good Men,” Pardini responded, “You’re damned right I said that. It’s none of their business.”

Well, actually, it was. While CMRR’s volunteer cadre, formed in 1982, was clearing the tracks from almost a decade of neglect, the tracks were owned by the county via purchase from the old New York Central line in 1978. A plan to relocate Vermont’s Steamtown USA to Kingston went for naught. Years went by until a new regime of progressive Democrats took charge with its own ideas of what to do with those 38 miles of scenic tracks from Kingston to Highmount. Enter the long-running controversy between rail and trail.

Given the latest developments, it would appear that remnants of the conflict between public and private sector remain.

Before laying out that complex story, it should be noted that despite government resistance, the railroad has become a major tourist attraction for Ulster County that draws more than 50,000 passengers a year.

This chapter of the story begins back in early April when the railroad announced a series of grants from the state Department of Transportation totaling $4.4 million. Grants of this magnitude are usually announced by county executives who take all credit for things that are good.

And this grant was a good one, not only for the railroad but for the environment as the major component, $2.3 million, will be designated to install a new bio-fuel engine for the line. Earlier smoke-spewing trains resembled a scene from the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

It seems that the railroad might have done an end-around on the county in going public with the grant without informing officialdom. “That’s not the case,” says railroad President Ernest Hunt. “We kept the county advised throughout the application process.”

County officials were not immediately available for comment, but there are some who remain anti-rail, its contributions to the county economy notwithstanding.

As things stand, a seven-member railroad corridor of the legislature is reviewing the grant and is expected to report out shortly, which in legislative terms means who knows when? Among its considerations is a request by the railroad to extend its western terminus about two miles to the world-class views of the Ashokan Reservoir.

The current unpleasantness aside, it would seem the railroad under Hunt’s conciliatory leadership has made some inroads with the government.

Former county executive Mike Hein was downright hostile to the railroad which he seemed to feel interfered with his plans to tear up tracks all over the county for walking trails. That we now have walking trails over those tracks accrues to Hein’s credit, though his methods remain questionable. Former executive Pat Ryan, his eye on higher office, was indifferent. “We could never get a meeting with him,” Hunt remembers. Jen Metzger, after two meetings with railroad leadership, is at least receptive, Hunt said. “Nine years (since the railroad applied for the state grant) is a long time,” she recently noted in a revealing message to the legislative committee. In other words, toot, toot.

I see great opportunities here.

Hunt says he’s willing to work with anyone, even if it means approaching county government hat-in-hand.

Mary Ann Parker would have approved.

Irish Green and Cardinal Red

The annual Hooley on the Hudson has become such a regional attraction — crowds for the one-day festival on Kingston’s Rondout waterfront typically exceed 15,000 — that even such a personage as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York was in attendance on Sunday.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Falstaff-ian spiritual leader of 2.5 million Catholics in an archdiocese encompassing Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island and 300 parishes to the north, came not only to honor Irish heritage which the event represents, but to also pay homage to the late Rev. Edmund Burke, an original Hibernian.

Father Burke, who served St. Mary’s Church in Kingston and St. Peter’s in Rosendale, was an avid supporter of the Hooley. He died earlier this year.

Dolan, 74, was appointed cardinal in 2009 during a period of turmoil and decline in the archdiocese. I was not in attendance for the cardinal’s brief remarks, but friends who did assured me he did not announce the closings of any more schools or churches.

As for the Ulster chapter of the Hibernians, of which I am a card-carrying member, spokesman Jim Carey advises me that plans for the long-delayed Irish Cultural Center on Abeel Street, a.k.a. “the hole on the hill,” are on ice while the organization negotiates the purchase of a temporary headquarters on The Strand once occupied by the Millens company.

With a deep bench of willing volunteers and leadership that knows its business, I expect the annual Hooley will remain a main event for years to come. I am less optimistic about the Hibernians’ ambitious plans for the ICC.