Making a Little Extra

The cost of pulling a permit for cameras to roll would more than double under the proposal, going from current $500 a month to $500 just to just get started, with an additional  $50 per day for up to 30 days.

Translation, er, subtitle: It will now cost block-buster wanna be production crews as much as  $2,000 a month to put the county's high desert Southwestern landscape on the big screen. But only time will tell whether the fee will hurt or help the industry, and the New Mexico Film Office, which operates under the umbrella of the state's Economic Development arm, shut down like a silent movie when asked its opinion on the fees.

Since 2010, the county has imposed fees through its Motion Pictures and Television Productions ordinance, subject to shoots on both public and private property.

Exceptions are obvious: If you're a student filming something for educational purposes, then you don't have to pay the fee; if you're a nonprofit making a film, you don't have to pay; if you're putting out a movie to raise money for charity, you don't have to pay. But if you're working on any sort of profit-making production that appears on the big screen and is large scale, then you do.

The fact that the ordinance exists is proof that the film industry is alive and well in the region. This latest tweaking, then, the first since the ordinance was established, is just an incremental bureaucratic process that's playing out, and it just so happens to be one of dozens of changes being made by the commission as it looks to overhaul its land development fees.

Innumerable inspections, after all, have to be carried out to make sure that anyone operating on county land is doing so in compliance with code, whether it entails new construction, altering existing structures or building temporary movie sets, already a common sight in a state that heavily subsidizes the film industry. Look around town. There's a reason why signs here redirect motorists around production crews. Hollywood is going full bore here.

Other industries are alive and well too, which can be seen in a few of the other proposed changes to the fee ordinance that hopes to make all land use consistent with Sustainable Land Development Code. For example, it will cost $3,000 for wireless communication facilities to get a permit to build on county land. But not all fees are proposed to go up. Resident who merely wants to build a house, for example, will see the price drop as the county wants to make sure that they're not paying as much as commercial developers.

And here's an usual one: There's a proposed reduction in the cost of the fee for demolishing buildings that have been destroyed by natural disasters, going from $100 to $15.

And the list goes on, with some of the fees still in the works and others already fixed but scheduled to be fine-tuned by the public hearings that are scheduled for Nov. 10 and Dec. 8.

But it's the film industry that seemed to be more on the radar of commissioners a little over 18 months ago when the commission started pondering the large-scale productions  here and what sorts of revenues they could make off them. It dominated the study session back then and it's almost uncanny on how it's now closing in on reality at the same time that Graves was being filmed on the Plaza last week.

Graves, if you're not familiar, is a political satire that closely resembles the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney and is scheduled to air on cable next year with 10 episodes, known in the industry as an "episodic" television series.

But the county isn't proposing to change the new rate on those: The price would remain the same, charging the same $500 for the permit to get started, along with $70 a week to roll their cameras, a drop in the bucket perhaps for Hollywood.

Just like the city of Santa Fe, the county has tried to tap into the bonanza to be gotten from Hollywood coming here. It's an exodus that started a little over two decades ago as filming costs in La La Land started to rise and production companies turned to other states that offered tax credits and discounts. The thinking at the time, courtesy of then Gov. Gary Johnson, is that the economic dividends could prove beneficial to a state that has long relied on the defense industry and natural resources for its revenues.

So far the county's key involvement in the film industry has been somewhat monumental, consisting of selling 65 acres of land on Highway 14 to Santa Fe Studios for $2.6 million. That was more than three years ago. Yet that venture, as reported in the Santa Fe New Mexican along with the mayor's new film office plans, has yet to pay what it owes the county.

But there are still three months to go with a December deadline, along with the 5 percent interest, and now Robert Nott is reporting that the studio wants to seek an industrial revenue bond to build even more.

Santa Fe Reporter