OBSERVER Photos by M.J. Stafford Cherubim on the fountain in the western side of Barker Common are missing their arms.

The cherub is back atop the fountain in the west end of Barker Common. However, some of its buddies below aren’t looking so good, the Fredonia Board of Trustees learned Monday.

“When the cherub was placed on top of the sculpture, we noticed different things that were broken along the lower part of that there,” Mayor Douglas Essek said.

Trustee Michelle Twichell said, when she attended the unveiling, cherub sculptor Bill Koch pointed out two arms on cherubs that needed to be replaced. Essek asked if anyone on the board would talk to him about doing further work on the fountain, and Twichell agreed to.

The trustees wondered if the damage to the arms was done before or after the cherub was replaced.

Trustee Jon Espersen said that Koch, in a letter to former Trustee Roger Britz, mentioned “the two arms, one is on the first tier, and one is a boy blowing a horn, so he did not do any prior work on those two parts of the fountain.” Britz spearheaded the effort to replace the cherub in 2020 after it was stolen a couple years earlier.

“It says that it’s new damage that occurred. Two more arms have been broken off and not recovered,” said Trustee Nicole Siracuse. “I would think he would have noted that previously,” Essek said.

“I would have liked it if he would have taken a picture of it to show us,” Twichell said.

Siracuse said she was also unsure if a quote Koch offered was for one of the arms, or both. Essek said more information would be sought from the sculptor.