By Billy Davis

The month of October passes the three-month mark since Roland Butler, appearing before the Board of Supervisors, assured the board that his Crenshaw plant would open for business.

“You can read my lips on that one,” Butler told supervisors in July, when he promised a 90-day deadline.

The month of August triggered a second benchmark: a three-year span since Panola County government handed Butler an empty Crenshaw factory in exchange for a promise of assembly line jobs at Rolando Curtis Foods.

The 2006 contract requires Butler to hire at least 150 workers within 690 days, then to maintain 80 percent of that workforce for five years.

Hundreds of Crenshaw residents had applied for a job at Rolando, hoping to work at what would be the struggling Delta town’s only industrial employer.  

The jobs have never come, however, even after Butler used the property as collateral to obtain a $1.4 million loan from a Colorado financier.  

Butler’s assurances of a functioning factory have become a familiar sight in The Panolian, most often when he has been pressed by the newspaper to explain another missed deadline. But Butler could not be reached this week about the newest missed deadline despite several attempts to contact him.

A reporter visited Butler’s home this week in Batesville’s Edgarwood subdivision, but the home did not seem to be occupied. No lights were on, and a Panola County Solid Waste garbage can had not been wheeled to the road for pick-up.

A spokesman for Solid Waste said Butler has not paid the monthly bill since February.

Butler has said he is renting the home from former County Administrator David Chandler, who retired last year.

Before Butler’s July encounter with supervisors, he had assured two of them, Gary Thompson and Kelly Morris, that Rolando Curtis Foods would open in 90 days. That promise had come in March 2008 – now a year and seven months ago.

Thompson, reached this week, said he was aware the latest promised deadline had come and gone.

“Yeah, I thought about it this week,” said Thompson, who serves as board president.

Beyond demanding more answers from Butler, Thompson said he was unsure if supervisors have any legal recourse to seize the former county property.  

Thompson added, however, that he believes the 2006 contract includes a deadline clause that would allow the property to revert back to the county if Butler fails to meet hiring goals stipulated in the contract.

The stated deadline is “four of five years,” the board president recalled.  A review of the document by The Panolian shows a five-year deadline.

A second contract clause triggered Butler’s appearance in July, after supervisors learned the contract allowed them to review how Butler spent the $1.4 million he acquired from the loan. But Butler left without producing what had been requested, an itemized list of expenditures.

He promised at the meeting that the list was forthcoming, but the financial document has yet to materialize, County Administrator Kelley Magee said this week.

Where workers for the Crenshaw plant will come from remains a mystery, since Butler told The Panolian in 2007 that he failed to find qualified applicants in Crenshaw during a job search in the little town. He had moved his job search to Batesville, he said.

After claiming he failed to find an adequate workforce, Butler made another claim in 2008: he had made a deathbed promise to late Supervisor Robert Avant that the plant would open soon.

Avant, whose district includes Crenshaw, had urged other supervisors to back the property transfer, citing the joblessness in the Delta area.

The unopened food plant was a repeated topic at Tuesday night’s political forum in Sardis, where District 2 supervisor candidates took turns taking political swipes at Butler and his unopened plant.

The forum was held prior to next Tuesday’s special election in District 2.   

“You bring him (Butler) into court so Panola County can return and get that building back and put that building back on the market,” speculated Tim Holliday.

Other candidates shared similar get-tough views, though candidate William Pride was the only one to note that a Deed of Trust had been filed. The property is now collateral, he pointed out.  

“You can’t just walk in there and take it … you’re going to have to deal with those lienholders,” Pride opined.

Only the District 2 incumbent, Vernice Avant, defended Butler, saying he was struggling to open the plant in a recession and had invested his own funds.

A second candidate, Paul Henderson, pointed out that Butler had invested money from a lender, not his own capital.  

Mrs. Avant also suggested Butler “come before the board,” apparently for another visit before supervisors, but she did not elaborate.

The Panolian reported in August that Mrs. Avant had been the lone county supervisor to back Butler’s plan to obtain a $700,000 state loan from the Miss. Development Authority.

A spokesman for MDA could not advise the status of Butler’s loan application by press time Thursday.