In June 2023, San Francisco’s Prop C funding for child care faced budget cuts. The city wanted to redirect $30 million.

Prop C was voted in by San Franciscans in 2018 — dedicated funding for early educators. For providers, especially those who’d been in the field for decades, it wasn’t just money. It was recognition. A promise that the city valued their work.

Now the city was asking to take some of it back.

Three choices

I convened a Chinese-language community meeting to discuss the options. Forty-three people joined. I laid out three choices:

  1. Insist — fight for zero cuts, no compromise
  2. Neutral — no position, let the process play out
  3. Accept — agree to the compromise and negotiate terms

The room was divided. Some said: “Not a single dollar should be cut.” Others said: “Even if we fight, we can’t control the outcome. Better to negotiate from a position of cooperation.”

The vote: 16 insisted. 1 neutral. 21 accepted the compromise. 5 abstained.

What I learned

This was one of the hardest meetings I’ve ever hosted. Not because of the disagreement — disagreement is healthy. But because the stakes were real, the options were imperfect, and there was no answer that would make everyone feel whole.

What I held onto:

  • Present the map, not the destination. I laid out the three choices clearly, with trade-offs for each. I didn’t tell people what to choose.
  • Respect the vote. Twenty-one people chose compromise. Sixteen chose resistance. Both positions were legitimate. My job was to honor the process, not override the result.
  • Show up for the next thing. Regardless of the vote, the final public comment hearing was on June 26. The community needed to be there. Unity isn’t about agreeing — it’s about showing up together even when you disagree.

One person wrote in the chat: “Even if the result isn’t what we can control, let’s give our greatest effort and strength.”

That’s the kind of leadership I want to learn from — not the kind that wins arguments, but the kind that keeps a community moving forward through imperfect choices.

The design underneath

Budget fights are policy problems on the surface. Underneath, they’re trust problems.

Do providers trust that the city will keep its promises? Do community members trust that their voices were heard, even when the outcome isn’t what they wanted? Do organizers trust each other enough to disagree openly and still collaborate?

I don’t have clean answers. But I know this: the night we voted, forty-three people showed up after a full day of caring for children, in their second or third language, on Zoom, at 9pm. That itself is an act of trust worth protecting.

Update (2026)

What I still carry from that night is the weight of providers asking me: “Oscar, what should we do? Should we agree or compromise?”

I felt that heaviness. Why are you asking me? Think about what’s good for you and your families. Because if I tell you what to choose, and the result doesn’t go well — I’m the one who told you to do it. That association is something I can’t hold. I won’t hold it.

I recently listened to Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness and it gave me language for what I was already feeling. She writes that the clearest boundaries come from the most compassionate people. The higher you hold your line, the more empathy you can offer to those on every side of it.

My line is: I lay out the map. I don’t pick your route. That’s not distance — that’s respect. I wrote more about this in Personal Guardrails in Advocacy.