Commentary: On the blight side, a stroll around City Hall provokes the question: Can't we do better?

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At one time, the Frank Putnam Flint fountain on the south side of Los Angeles City Hall had three things going for it:A likeness of the former U.S.senator, a plaque detailing his service, and, of course, water.The fountain has none of those things today, and hasn’t for years.The marble structure is, however, still a monument of sorts.

Graffiti and all, it’s a monument to neglect, to failed leadership, and to the sense of surrender that afflicts so many public spaces in Los Angeles.This is an election year, and it’s fair for taxpayers to wonder whether the care and maintenance of their neighborhoods will ever improve if the people who run the city can’t manage their own property.The fountain, by the way, didn’t just dry up yesterday.When I told my editor what I was working on, he dug up an L.A.

Times story from 1997 that was titled: “On the blight side.” Times reporter Paul Dean noted that Flint helped tap the Owens Valley water that irrigated L.A.’s growth and prosperity, but the fountain named for him had not been in operation for 30 years.It was later restored, but shut down again a decade or so ago.

So going back nearly 60 years, the late Mr.Flint has been left to quietly suffer the indignities of desecration and abandonment, but for temporary intervention.A city analysis a couple of years ago cited repair costs as one issue and vandalism prevention as another.

But with roughly 50,000 city employees, and the nation’s third-largest police department across the street, why is a simple security detail such an impossible challenge? I would like for Mayor Karen Bass, or her successor, to do one of two things:Hal Bastian, who helped build the downtown renaissance, lays out a recovery plan.Fix the fountain — perhaps with help from Project Restore L.A., a nonprofit doing good preservation work at City Hall — and arrange for its permanent upkeep.Or bulldoze it,...