During the 2017 NBA championship celebration, Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob promised to pick up the parade tab for the city of Oakland, which was just weeks from slashing funding for homeless services, emergency responders and other government agencies amid financial concerns.
Two days later, a team spokesman told the East Bay Times the Warriors pledged $4 million to the city.
Neither payment has been received by the city, despite Oakland delivering a $1,060,174 bill to the Warriors with a due date of Aug. 18, 2017, according to the East Bay Express and The Mercury News.
There was no written contract between the Warriors and Oakland, but Lacob made it clear the team intended to pay the full bill during his address to the estimated 1 million fans on hand at the parade:
“We recognize that times are hard and this city in particular has had its share of issues over the years, and it has its share of needs,” Lacob told the Oakland crowd at the end of his speech on June 15. “There’s a lot of fundamental needs, police, schools and everything like that. We’d just like to say that this parade, this whole day, all the cost, every dollar is on us. It’s our gift to the city of Oakland.”
To their credit, the team still intends to foot the bill, and Oakland spokeswoman Karen Boyd told The Mercury News, “The Warriors have given us no reason to doubt they will honor their commitments,” but at issue are several line items the city included that seem to have taken the team by surprise.
Specifically, Oakland billed the Warriors for this year’s parade at a price tag of $815,896, nearly three times its originally estimate of $300,000, and then added another $244,278 in costs for the team’s 2015 title parade, the reports said. Labor costs alone for the 588 police officers present at the parade came to $313,372, roughly $533 per officer. Not to mention another $1,540 spent on water for the officers.
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Warriors And Oakland Haggling Over Parade Costs
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