I’ve been blaming my Norway maples for nearly everything lately – our dying lawn, the potential serial killers on my doorstep, Richard Rush’s impending defeat, you name it.

Each fall for nearly 25 years, as our street trees – four aging maples and a pair of sycamores – send a cascade of leaves onto our corner lot, I’ve tried to remain philosophical. Sure the leaves are a mess, but I think of all the beauty and benefits these golden specimens provide the rest of the year. But as the grass disappears and the tree roots keep invading our lawn, our sidewalks and our sprinkler system, even I have begun to plot against them.

Four years ago, I decided that pruning would help restore sunlight to our ailing lawn. Approximately $400 later, our trees opened up to dapple some light on the fescue. The next year, they flourished thicker than ever.

October has become an increasingly creepy season as the massive leaf burial mounds on our lawn attract shifty-eyed, door-to- door leaf rakers, the kinds of guys who make me wonder if they’re focused on raking or on staking out the place.

So as we head into a week where the City Council race for my South Hill district will be decided in a recount, I think about Rush’s prospects and I cast an evil eye at my trees.

Given that Rush was the architect of the city’s new consumption-based water rates, surely it must have been thirsty maples like ours that drove voters to give opponent Mike Allen the narrowest of leads.

It took a conversation with Spokane’s urban forest mastermind and tree advocate, Jim Flott, to absolve the trees lining the South Hill’s parking strips of the outcome of that race.

Flott, the former city urban forester who inventoried Spokane’s 60,000 public trees and led the drive to create its urban forest program, argues that my maples don’t guzzle enough to significantly drive up my water bill.

Instead, as these street trees block the sunlight from nurturing my lawn, I and half the rest of the South Hill react to the withering grass by overwatering. Now an independent arborist with Community Forestry Consultants, Flott sees it all the time.

Public street trees, Flott explains, belong to the property owner but benefit the entire region by absorbing carbon that might otherwise be released into the atmosphere, by reducing air pollution, by shielding us against noise and wind, and by reducing stormwater drainage into the Spokane River. That’s why the city regulates the pruning, removal and planting of street trees.

Heck, Flott says, even the pavement benefits from street trees. Asphalt that’s shaded in the summer lasts an extra 10 to 15 years. That’s because heat causes the cracks that ultimately lead to potholes.

So if the entire community benefits from the city’s street trees, why don’t property owners get a break on the costs of their care?

Flott points out that in other cities they do. Take Boise, for example, which calls itself “the city of trees.” There, the city prunes street trees on a regular rotation. Property owners don’t bear all the costs themselves.

But whether it’s the trees or the lawns gulping down Spokane’s water each summer, Flott argues strenuously that the city should indeed charge high users more. He quotes Steven Solomon’s book “Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization.”

I’m embarrassed to admit my household used 44,880 gallons of water last month. Solomon points out that one of every five people on the planet lack a single gallon of drinkable water each day.

Water’s more central to our survival on the planet than oil. “You can’t drink oil,” Flott says. “If we don’t have potable water, we’re not going to make it.”

He recommends replacing ailing lawns like mine with drought-tolerant plants, mulch and smaller patches of grass.

I’ve been viewing my trees rather like college-age children: adorable, certainly carrying the potential for significant contribution to the community, but mind-bogglingly expensive. We’ve even twice paid for sewer line replacements.

As for my yard, I imagine more dollars flying out of my wallet to retool a drought-resistant landscape.

Around here, the long view is difficult. It’s hard to gaze at my water bill, my lawn-killing maples, and my sewer-line-loving sycamores without feeling like a bit of a sap.

Nonetheless, Flott convinced me: My neighbors can vote Richard Rush out of office over the new water-rate structure, but without water, the real threat standing on our doorsteps is not brown lawns but our descendants’ demise.