When I was in college, I took a class on Native American culture that introduced me to the writings of Carlos Casteneda.

Now, Casteneda -- in spite of, or perhaps because of, the ingestion of various natural mushroom-type substances popular at one time in our not too distant history -- imparted several fascinating personal philosophies. The one that has stuck with me over the decades is that reality is a relative concept.

Put simply, everybody sees things differently. While we may debate whether what the person is seeing is the result of severe vision impairment, we cannot argue the fact that to the person, what they see is very, very real. And, it may very well be. We really don't know.

Fast forward to law school, where anybody you would ever want representing you learns that you better be able to see every possible reality that may pop up for your client, and do something about it. It really doesn't matter which reality is the real reality in your mind. What matters is which reality is going to seem real in the judge's or jury's mind, or in the mind of the opposing party.

People whose realities have not been accepted by the judge or jury often refer to this as lawyers "twisting things around."

We all have a tendency to create reality from the information and experiences available to us. That's dangerous many times, because many of us have absolutely no awareness of how much we don't know. Oprah likes to say, "When you know better, you do better." You also think better.

At Bellevue Council's work session on Tuesday -- which may have to become known as Bellevue Council Meeting #1, to distinguish it from the nearly indistinguishable Bellevue Council Meeting #2 of the month -- there were any number of realities expressed during the COPS debate that I found amusing for the most part, and a little troublesome as well.

The first was Mark Helbling's desire to have Bellevue return to the way it was when he was a kid. Now, unless Helbling is talking infancy, his youth featured Bellevue gaining the dubious distinction of having the second highest property crime rate in Allegheny County. Bellevue's weekly police report filled an entire page of The Citizen, and most of it was burglaries and robberies and other serious crimes. That's how Bellevue got not one, but two grant-funded police officers who did nothing but deal with those serious crimes. This wasn't part of Helbling's reality, though, when he was out playing baseball with his friends.

Then there was Police Chief Matt Sentnher's statement that he is seeing prostitution in town, something that Bellevue never had before. At least not since an entire prostitution ring operated out of one of the highrise apartment buildings on Lincoln Avenue, not too far from the street where the kiddie porn ring operated. At the time this all happened, Sentner was building police cars out of blocks.

Dave Gillingham Jr. commented on what an honor it was to receive the COPS grant. Hel-lo! You get this grant by having a bad crime rate. That's not an honor, it's an embarrassment. For the purposes of this discussion, however, we have to point out that this was not Gillingham filtering a perception through missing information, it was just Gillingham being Gillingham.

What was very surprising was the confusion many officials -- including the solicitor and one with an HR background -- expressed about Jane Braunlich's perceptive comment that guaranteeing 15 police officers jobs for four years could have a tremendous impact on next year's contract negotiations. Everywhere we look today, police officers are being laid off because no one has the money to pay them. Now, considering this reality, would you be inclined to agree to a salary freeze or start contributing to the cost of your benefits if you knew there was absolutely no way you were going to get laid off in the next four-plus years? Of course not. You can tell there are a whole lot of people in the borough building who have never negotiated a union contract, and apparently that lack of knowledge is altering their perceptions.

Now here is my reality: The single greatest obstacle to the viability of Bellevue -- and Avalon -- as nice suburban communities is the property tax rate levied by the Northgate School District. As long as home-buying families can get a comparable residence at a considerably lower annual cost in a nearby community, that is where they will buy their homes and raise their families and invest in their newfound communities. Bellevue's tax rate may be reasonable, but Bellevue does not exist in a vacuum. To get to Bellevue's reasonable millage rate you have to plow through Northgate's sky-high one.

Bellevue has to do everything it can to offset Northgate's burden to keep the borough's head above water until we can get a school board in there that will address the problem.

Where does the COPS grant fit in? In my reality, it would be a shame to turn down nearly $300,000 that can be used to improve Bellevue. At the same time, we have to recognize that a massive portion of the borough's revenue goes to paying incredible benefits for public employees. These things are unheard of in the private sector, and they need to fade from the reality of the public sector as well. It's time for all of Bellevue's employees to start giving up some of those benefits, and contributing toward the cost of those they keep. That money can be put to much better use paying for things like another police officer or public improvements.

The reality is that Bellevue officials have to look quite a bit farther than the next fiscal year. Yes, they may be able to pay for a fourth year of an additional police officer, but then what?

That reality remains to be seen.