Sunday, May 10, 2009

Johnny's got a solution to the Colgate Clock kafuffle, it involves bulldozers

Welcome soap opera fans to the episode where Jersey City tries to get one million dollars for the upkeep of the Colgate Clock down on the waterfront all while the Colgate company says "there's no contract for upkeep, go get bent".

First, the Colgate Clock in question:


It faces Manhattan and lights up at night to tell New Yorkers what time it is in Jersey City, wooooo, what a VALUABLE service it performs. Nobody in New York has clocks ya know, and their cell phones don't have any kind of time function.

Now, instead of spending ANY money on lawyers, Jersey City should simply go take the Colgate sign off of it and replace the Colgate ad with a Pepsodent, or Gleem or Crest sign. We'll see pretty quickly how much Colgate wants to pony up and actually make a claim to the clock for upkeep. The land this 'landmark' sits on it leased to the Colgate-Palmolive company and that's a pretty easy fix. The city could also use an imminent domain law of some kind to steal back the property like the federal government is doing to landowners in Pennsylvania to build a Flight 93 memorial.

If Colgate wants it both ways and demands the clock stay up and that they owe nothing as there is no deal, roll the dozers, seriously, why would we spend a million dollars we don't have in legal fees over a giant light up clock?

Time will tell.....

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