The official completion deadline for the new Butler County Prison passed Saturday without the $40 million structure even being completely enclosed. Meanwhile, last week, the general contractor, A.G. Cullen of Pittsburgh, revealed that the project probably would not be completed by mid-April, which had been the latest projection.

It's becoming increasingly possible that the new facility won't be in full operation until late summer or fall next year. If that timetable is what it will take to get the prison built without problems that would have to be addressed for who-knows-how-long, that is the timetable that must be accepted.

But the situation is not so clear-cut and easy to swallow — from the standpoint of county government as well as from the standpoint of taxpayers.

The construction contract was crafted with the provision that the structure be completed by the targeted finish date or the contractors responsible could be penalized financially for each day that the deadline was missed.

Cullen and the other contractors accepted that requirement, and the possibility for financial penalities, when they signed the contracts covering their respective duties. They should be held to that contract provision; the contractors would have wanted financial penalties against the county enforced if the county had not lived up to its contract responsibilities.

But the issue and the matter of penalizing Cullen or any other contractor for the delayed completion isn't as easy of a matter as it might seem.

It was neither Cullen's, nor any other contractor's, actions that thrust the project into its current conundrum. It was the county's failure to acknowledge from the start, especially in the respective construction contract documents, that problems beyond the control of the contractors could eliminate any chance for meeting Saturday's deadline.

And, that's exactly what happened. The delay in obtaining the prison's structural steel, despite Cullen's quick ordering of that steel once it became clear that Cullen was on track to receive the general-construction contract, caused Cullen to lose all of last summer in getting the prison contruction, above the foundation, under way.

That placed Cullen's back to the wall in terms of getting the prison done on time, and it's been clear for many months that the deadline could not be met.

Now, with the deadline past, county taxpayers are left watching how the current county commissioners address the lateness — or whether they leave that decision to the new board that will be in office as of the first Monday of January.

Commissioner Glenn Anderson is not seeking re-election this year, Commissioner Scott Lowe was defeated for a Republican nomination in this spring's primary balloting, and Commissioner James Kennedy's future on the board will not be known until the Nov. 6 general election ballots are counted.

Commissioner candidates should be discussing their views on how to handle the missed deadline as part of their campaigns, but at a commissioner candidates debate Tuesday evening at Butler County Community College that important issue was ignored.

Amid the uncertainties regarding the prison project's future, there remains the fact that the current friction between Cullen and the county government over the missed deadline could have been averted.

The construction contracts could have made provisions for problems beyond the contractors' control, providing flexibility on the completion deadline. However, that wouldn't have squared with the current commissioners' hopes of getting the project completed while all of them still were in office.

The state of inflexibility that has existed throughout the project could have been avoided for the overall good of the project. Instead, what exists is contract language calling for $1,000-a-day fines for Cullen or other contractors, or a requirement that contractors reimburse the county for the actual costs incurred by the delay, which includes the housing of "overflow" prisoners at other counties' lockups.

But Paul Cullen, a co-owner of A.G. Cullen, sent an e-mail to the Butler Eagle indicating that it could cost the county more each day for housing a prisoner at the new prison, once it is completed, than what the county currently is paying to house prisoners in other counties — or even at the current prison.

"It will cost Butler County millions more when the new prison is completed," he said.

From the standpoint of Cullen, the county and the taxpayers, it must be hoped that the upcoming winter is mild, and that an early blast of winterlike conditions doesn't throw an additional monkey wrench in the process of getting the new prison fully enclosed.

Whatever happens, officials — whoever they might be — will have the task of moving the project onto a more positive path than it's been on up to now.

It's time for leadership to step forward to get everyone on the same page — in terms of contract requirements, communication and open-mindedness.

Unfortunately, that kind of leadership has not prevailed up to now.