McFarland Youth Center warns of ‘existential’ funding risk as village pauses community center plan

Sean Miller, president of McFarland Youth Center Inc., delivered a nearly hour‑long update to the McFarland School District board about programming, attendance and a looming funding and governance decision that he said could put the center’s current operation at risk.

“McFarland Youth Center has existed, in essence, since 1998,” Miller told the board, summarizing the nonprofit’s origins, its weekday hours and typical attendance. He described a mix of unstructured recreation and increasingly intentional, structured programming — leadership and service activities, “Fresh Food Fridays” cooking sessions and field trips — that the center tracks as “asset‑building hours.” Miller said typical attendance during the school year is about 20–25 students a day and that the center has logged roughly 25,000 open hours and an order‑of‑magnitude estimate of 70,000 asset‑building hours over its lifetime.

Miller credited long‑standing support from the school district, Dane County and many individual donors for sustaining programming and staffing. He also described an operational transition plan he and the youth center board developed with Village of McFarland staff that envisioned moving day‑to‑day administration to the village when a planned…