Butler’s lone winter relief center will reduce its services this year because of a contract dispute with Butler County Human Services.

The Grace Youth and Family Foundation’s Winter Relief Center, 100 Center Ave., served 1,654 guest nights for the homeless this past winter.

However, Bill Halle, owner of the foundation, said that number will drop this year because of a new contract the county asked the foundation to sign, but it declined to do so.

“It has provisions that we just cannot agree to,” Halle said.

Halle said the county is asking his nonprofit agency to sign a contract that would remove his organization’s right to faith-based hiring practices, sign over exclusive ownership and copyrights to the program and to provide “extensive” auditing access to the county.

Joyce Ainsworth, the director of county Human Services, said the contract is a standard agreement it has with each of the nonprofits it partners with.

“It covers all the rules and regulations required for us to receive grant money from (the state and federal government),” she said. “He felt uncomfortable signing it so we’re moving on to Plan B.”

Halle said he was told Tuesday morning that the county pulled the $35,000 it was to contribute to the program this winter due to the lack of a contract.

That was just days before the center opens Sunday for the winter.

“That’s a huge amount of money we need to come up with,” Halle said, noting it accounts for about 40 to 50 percent of the program’s budget.

Ainsworth said the department has been speaking throughout the summer with Halle about the contract.

“This is something that we thought might happen,” she said.