Looking for a dream home? Spokane Valley incorporated as Washington’s eighth largest city two years ago with rosy expectations of better service and lower taxes. If the projections, including those paid for by incorporation backers, seemed too good to be true, it’s because they were. Revenues, especially sales taxes, have fallen short of expectations.

Consequently, voters in the young municipality will decide in September whether to approve a property tax hike worth $21 a year to the owner of a $100,000 home. The revenue would be spent on paving neighborhood streets after sewer lines are installed.

The need to restore property taxes to their pre-incorporation level reveals the excessive optimism of earlier predictions about a $6 million surplus following a single year of cityhood. All of which raises questions as to why the City Council was entertaining ideas of acquiring a new city hall. Why invite capital budget problems when the operating budget already has serious difficulties to overcome?

Fortunately, the council decided on a pragmatic course this week. For now, it will forgo acquisition of a new seat of city government — although city officials will stay on the lookout for an irresistible deal. Irresistible? As in too good to be true?

Harry Truman would be right at home. Teresa Heinz Kerry was rude and hostile to, horrors, the editorial page editor of a Pennsylvania newspaper. Her “Shove it!” was mild compared with the vulgarity that Vice President Dick Cheney used to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., right there on the Senate floor last month.

Departing from today’s fashion, neither Kerry nor Cheney claimed to have been quoted out of context. Neither public figure expressed regret over a momentary lapse in judgment. And neither, bless them, mumbled one of those dutiful apologies to “anyone who might have taken offense.”

Kerry said she was speaking her mind in an exasperating situation. Cheney said the outburst made him feel better.

OK, most of us can identify. According to the partisan scoreboard, the gotcha game is knotted at 1-1. Let’s call it a draw and move on to things that matter.