Butler County’s rift with Bill Halle is both well defined and unavoidable.

Halle’s nonprofit, Grace Youth and Family Foundation, operates Butler’s only wintertime homeless shelter, the Winter Relief Center, 100 Center Ave. As it begins its fifth season this weekend, the shelter will be forced to reduce services because of a contract dispute with Butler County Human Services.

The county pulled its $35,000 contribution for this winter because Halle refuses to sign a contract.

It’s a standard agreement, says Joyce Ainsworth, director of Human Services. It covers regulations required for the county to receive state and federal grants for human services.

But Halle says his faith-based foundation answers to a higher authority.

The county contract “has provisions that we just cannot agree to,” Halle says. They include removing his nonprofit organization’s right to faith-based hiring practices; signing over exclusive ownership and copyrights to the program; and providing “extensive” auditing access even to programs not receiving county funding.

The dispute is justifiable.

The county is obligated to to keep track of all tax dollars and to maintain documentation that ensures its eligibility for state and federal grant money.

The county did not require a contract the first four seasons of the Winter Relief Center’s existence, but it’s larger now. The center reported serving 1,654 guest nights last winter. Ainsworth says the program has grown too big not to have a contract.

The Grace Youth and Family Foundation is obligated to remain true to its mission as a faith-based nonprofit.

Halle defends the foundation’s right to exempt itself from the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discriminatory hiring based on religion. The act does allow exemption for religious organizations to hire individuals based on religion when the religion has a direct bearing on the job.

An exemption clause in the Civil Rights Act states that “It shall not be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to hire and employ employees ... on the basis of his religion, sex, or national origin in those certain instances where religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise.”

It’s why Asian restaurants employ Asian waitresses, for example.

The implication that Halle’s Christian organization requires Christian employees to further its mission has not been challenged.

On the other hand, the county must ensure that tax dollars aren’t spent on programs that discriminate, only that homeless people have a place to come in from the cold.

That requirement might result in the unfortunate formation of a rival homeless shelter program — another duplication of services in Butler County. Both programs would be underfunded and dependent on individual administration, supervision, occupation and other expenses.

Ultimately, it’s likely to result in some people being turned away from one or the other shelter. That could be devastating to a homeless person with nowhere else to go on a sub-zero night.

If there’s a way to avoid needless duplication, then that way should be pursued.

One possibility might be to negotiate revisions to the contract’s objectionable clauses. There might be other potential remedies. Let’s see some creative governing.