I have heard that my Italian relations and Japanese in-laws could whip up a tasty dish with fish heads, but for most of us, the decision is to toss them out, hoping the garbage truck comes in the morning.

The city’s behind-schedule and over-budget heavy rail plan is something like that bag of old fish heads: You can’t just ignore it.

Someone has to do something. Either pay for it or kill it; whatever they do with rail, it is going to smell.

Right now the chore belongs to the state Legislature, although lawmakers are searching for others to pick up the pilau bag.

Last week, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell submitted to multiple verbal thrashings from both Sen. Jill Tokuda, Ways and Means chairwoman, and Senate President Donna Mercado Kim as he continued his campaign for Oahu taxpayers to fund the estimated, at-least $1 billion overage.

Caldwell asked for the Oahu-only, extra half-percent general excise tax charge to be continued forever.

But Christmas isn’t coming in March, and the Senate budget committee only offered up a bill giving Caldwell money for another five years, extending the tax to 2027.

When the 2005 Legislature approved the rail tax scheme, the only way the transit backers could move the bill was by promising to halt the tax increase in 2022.

Now Caldwell says the rail is proving to be more expensive to build than predicted. Of course, rail critics and former Govs. Linda Lingle and Ben Cayetano said the same thing, but now someone has to pay the bills.

Rep. Sylvia Luke, House Finance chairwoman, crafted her own rail funding bill. It would lower the rail tax surcharge from the current half-percent more, to a quarter-percent more in 2017 without specifying how long the new lower tax would last.

So on its surface, the Luke plan is something of a tax cut, but critics say it does not give the city enough to prop up the city rail construction budget.

This year, Caldwell is trying to sell the forever tax increase as a way to pay for new rail extensions, including to the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

"I don’t want to be back in five years, whether I’m here or not" needing another vote on funding for those route extensions, Caldwell said during a hearing last week. "To put the community" through that kind of "pain" would be difficult, he said.

Two years ago, Caldwell asked for the tax increase in perpetuity to pay for the operating cost of the train.

Operational costs, according to a 2012 city report, are estimated to be $110 million and are expected to grow to $145 million by 2030.

Rail is actually more of a dilemma than just a problem. There is no good choice.

As House Speaker Joe Souki said in a recent interview, rail construction is about the future of Oahu.

"You tell me what traffic is going to be like 20 years from now; how can you tell me that 20 years from now people are not going to want rail?" Souki said.

So if rail is to come, someone is going to have to take out the trash.