Long-running dispute over Confederate statue drives tension in Liberty mayoral election

Yahoo

04-04-2025

During City Council meetings, Liberty Mayor Greg Canuteson can be seen making faces, rolling his eyes and whispering to other council members while residents speak during public comment.
Several of those residents — including his opponent in next week's mayoral election Giselle Fest — have said Canuteson is rude to Liberty citizens and lacks transparency. Fest says Canuteson refuses to answer questions from residents, citing the Missouri Sunshine Act, a state law meant to promote access to public records and information about the government.
But Canuteson, a full-time lawyer in Liberty and former legislator in the Missouri House of Representatives, said it's important to put his facial expressions in context.
He said the people he reacts to during public meetings, including Fest and her friends, are not just random residents. They are members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that has organized and shown up to speak at meetings for years to make sure a statue of a Confederate soldier remains standing in a nearby cemetery.
Canuteson says Fest and members of the group frequently disrupt council meetings by spreading what he considers misinformation during public comment time and asking questions that the city has answered several times before, costing the city money in labor and time.
'They make these allegations that the city has to respond to, but for the city to respond and make sure they're accurate they spend a lot of time…over and over,' he said.
'Everybody else that comes up comes in good faith, we listen to them, and then we try to refer them to whoever might be able to answer the question,' Canuteson said. 'But that's not a time for [four people] to come up and berate council members.'
Now, the long-running tension between Canuteson and Fest over the Confederate statue and a smattering of other key local issues has boiled over into the city's mayoral election.
Fest, a Republican, said she likes to think of herself as more of a community activist than a politician. In fact, she said she was not thinking about running for mayor until multiple people in the community asked her to run against incumbent Canuteson.
For five years now, Fest and others have attended the city meetings to protect the unmarked graves of Confederate soldiers in Fairview & New Hope cemeteries in Liberty.
The city has agreed to leave the graves alone, but residents disagree about whether a statue of a Confederate soldier should be removed, a matter that is now tied up in court.
The issue has been one Canuteson has had to face for his entire time in office. The previous mayor had banned public comment about the statue during city meetings.
'I'm uniquely built for this…I have no problem going in every two weeks and fighting for the community against a small group of angry people who want to celebrate the first grand wizard of the KKK,' Canuteson said.
Fest rejected his claim that the soldier was affiliated with the KKK.
'He wants to go to the ugliest part of history, which is not really me,' Fest said. 'It's what he does. It divides our community. It's not good for the discussion…it just frustrates me.'
She said Canuteson often brings up the city's history of a man being lynched at the city's courthouse.
Fest's husband has family members buried in the cemetery and is very passionate about preserving their names. She said she doesn't care about the statue necessarily and has agreed to put a plaque over the soldier's name.
Recently, what Canuteson calls a 'small group' of people associated with the Sons of Confederate Veterans have opposed a 1% sales tax on Tuesday's ballot that would increase first responders' pay and renovate the city's police department. If approved by voters, the tax would provide the city $7.5 million.
Canuteson has said this will be the last tax increase in Liberty for a while if voters pass it and choose to re-elect him.
Meanwhile, Fest, a Republican, has embraced the slogan, 'No tax increases,' in her opposing campaign.
Canuteson said public safety is his number one priority in his re-election campaign, especially to ensure that the city's crime and unemployment rates remain some of the lowest in the metro.
While some residents have criticized his proposed public safety tax on the ballot, he said a sales tax seemed to be the way to avoid raising homeowners' property taxes. He said the sales tax would be spread across the city and include shoppers who buy things in Liberty but live elsewhere.
Fest remembers her time as a single mother in Liberty, pinching together change to make ends meet.
'The reason why I'm running is to look at those interests for our people,' she said. 'If you look at the regressive tax, it'll tell you that it harms that people, the middle, the average and the below income people.'
The idea of building a new facility for law enforcement isn't new to the Northland. The Clay County Sheriff's Department recently broke ground on their new training center without raising county taxes. Fest is questioning why Liberty cannot do the same and suggesting that the city is not managing its money wisely.
She said Liberty should use money from its existing tax revenue to address public safety concerns.
Canuteson said it's not as simple as that. Certain taxes must be used for specific purposes such as roads and the general fund, he said.
Fest said she's not necessarily against supporting first responders, but she has seen firsthand how retired citizens like herself are barely making it by with current property and sales tax rates.
'We need to take a breath,' Fest said. 'We need a citizen, a full citizens committee, to look at a
zero-based budget.'
Right now, Liberty has a budget committee that meets at least once a month, sometimes more, as well as a Citizens Sales Tax Oversight Committee.
Beyond the proposed tax, Fest and her supporters have criticized the city's spending under Canuteson more broadly. One of their biggest complaints is what they have deemed as the unnecessary spending of $300,000 on Christmas lights.
But Canuteson said this was part of an effort to add street lights and revitalize one of the city's most forgotten areas: a historically Black neighborhood including Garrison School Historic District, the first public school for African American youth in Liberty.
Canuteson sent out a task force to evaluate neighborhoods close to downtown where most Black residents lived in the past, he said. The task force came back to report that the areas were not walkable and lacked critical infrastructure and street lights.
'I find it really ironic that one thing they've identified to cut is the one project we're doing in the historically Black section of the town,' he said. Especially since the city has done similar projects in two other historically white neighborhoods downtown.
'It's ridiculous,' he added.