A reporter had two choices if he showed up today around noon, trying to get a quote from a commissioner who was, in fact, at home in bed with the flu:

1.Irish Dancing!

2.Police Bureau Budget Crisis!

"The reality is, if we're going to take more cuts, the time to do more with less is over," says Portland Police Association President Scott Westerman. "We're stretched as this as you can possibly imagine, it's time to start doing service cuts."

"When we've cut management command in the past, bad things have happened," says Dave Benson, head of the supervisors' union. "When you thin the soup out at that level so much, the accountability goes down, the transparency goes down, and you have problems."

So: Which is it to be? 1.Irish Dancing, or 2.Police Bureau Budget Crisis! You choose! [for Irish Dancing, turn to page 54; for Police Bureau Budget Crisis, go to page 12943...]