CAIRO — Grady County Administrator Buddy Johnson said he believes Tired Creek Lake consultant Will Butler is the “real deal” when it comes to solving the legal quagmires surrounding the lake project.

“I’m so tired of hearing people say Will Butler’s a fraud,” Johnson said. “No he’s not. He is not a fraud.”

Johnson made the comments in a public joint session of the Grady County Lake Authority and the county board of commissioners April 9.

The county commission dispatched Johnson to Leon County, Florida, where Butler operates, to determine if the services he provides to Grady County are worth the expenses he is paid.

Johnson said it became apparent that Butler is worth the price.

“This guy has saved you and this county at least a quarter of a million, and that’s counting what we’ve paid him already,” Johnson told the commissioners and Lake Authority members. “You’re getting your money’s worth out of Will Butler.”

The county administrator said despite some consistent public criticism of Butler, he believes the consultant is doing his job and providing a valuable service.

“It wouldn’t matter if he laid a golden egg right in the middle of the thing that’s worth $800 billion, they’d still hate his guts,” Johnson said. “It’s just reality.”

Johnson said he has no personal ties to Butler and approached the subject without any pre-convictions.

“There is a ‘we hate Will Butler’ side of the world and there’s ‘we love Will Butler,’” Johnson said. “Then there’s people like me in the middle who are like, all right, what’s the reality of this thing?”

As a result, the county administrator indicated he also has no issue dismissing Butler if it ever becomes clear the consultant has exhausted his value.

“The day that he is not viable, the day that he is not doing his job, the day that I see that we are not getting our money’s worth, rest assured, I’ll be the first guy to stand up and say ‘that’s it, you’ve got to go somewhere else,’” Johnson said.

Butler is currently working with officials in Leon to defuse a number of legal threats concerning Tired Creek Lake.

Johnson said litigation with the Florida county has kept Grady in a “mess” for more than a decade.

“They have been litigating us to death,” Johnson said. “It’s not necessarily litigating as much as they create issues where we’ve had to hire lawyers where we have a lawyer in place who basically answers complaint after complaint after complaint.”

Johnson said part of the reason the commission asked him to look into the county’s situation with Butler was to determine how to get out of the litigation troubles with Leon in order to attract investors.

“No investor is going to invest in this lake as long as that’s going on,” Johnson said. 

Johnson, Butler, Lake Authority executive director Mike Binion and liaison to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Laura Benz met with representatives from Leon County and their attorneys to negotiate a solution to the issue Dec. 21.

The county administrator said he discovered the root of the dispute could be traced back several years to when a former Grady official informed Leon of the intentions to begin the lake project.

Representatives from Leon told the Grady official, who Johnson did not name, that they had several concerns about what the project could mean for the quality of their water.

“The response was ‘it’s none of your damn business, we’re going to build the lake,’” Johnson said, “to which they responded, ‘fine, we’ve got more money than you, we’ll just keep you in court all the time.’ And they did.”

Part of the reason why Leon County officials are now willing to negotiate, Johnson said, is because while they have the size and resources to essentially put their litigation efforts on “auto-pilot,” the issue is not vital to them.

“In reality, Leon County really doesn’t care,” Johnson said. “This isn’t in any of their discussions. They’re not talking about Tired Creek at their meetings.”

Johnson said Benz has begun to lay the groundwork for a memorandum of understanding with Leon County.

The county administrator said he hoped the legal issues with Leon could be put to rest by May, adding that he believed the outcome would not have been possible without Butler’s assistance.

“This stuff would have cost you half a million dollars to litigate without him,” Johnson told the commissioners and Lake Authority members. “He knows these people. He knows them well enough to call them on their phones, he goes and hunts with them. He’s a Tallahassee guy.”

Johnson added that in recent months two investors, both of whom Butler knows, have approached the county expressing interest in exploring opportunities at Tired Creek Lake.

Butler, who was not present at the joint meeting, plans to meet with the Lake Authority in a public session and answer their questions May 1.

Johnson said the commissioners will be able to form their own opinions on Butler at the meeting.

The county administrator’s own assessment, however, had already been made.

“Will Butler is the real deal,” Johnson said. “He’s not a joke. He knows what he’s doing.”