Simi Valley to Exact Toll for Filming Its Scenery

OK, MacGyver, dig into your pocket.

You “Three Amigos,” cough up too.

After years of playing host to Hollywood movie makers without much compensation, the City of Simi Valley has decided to charge film makers $400 for the privilege of shooting movies, television shows or commercials in the city.

The charge was added to a list of 318 other fees that came under yearly review this week by the City Council. Besides the location fee, the cost of obtaining a permit to use public property to film movies or take commercial still photographs will increase from $100 to $120 a day.

As expected, most fees--205 in all--were increased. But the council lowered 26 fees, and 88 were left unchanged. Sewer and water fees and transit fares were not reviewed because they are considered separately by the council.

Based on Cost of Service

“The city determined several years ago to place all the city’s fees in one document and to review them on an annual basis,” said Bob Heitzman, an assistant to the city manager. “The review of the fees is based upon the cost of providing the service.”

If labor, materials and equipment costs have risen since the last review, the fees for providing those services probably will rise, said Loren Cox, general services director, who compiled the list for the council.

The charges, which go into effect Jan. 1, are listed in a 238-page document. They will bring in 14% more than the $2.5 million generated by fees in the current fiscal year, Cox estimated.

It still will cost $9 to obtain a duplicate cassette tape of a City Council meeting, although the $39 fee for a public dance permit is going up to $47. But the cost of a city street map will go down--from 60 to 40 cents--largely because the cost of printing the maps has gone down a bit.

$225 for Traffic Study

Other new fees were added, in addition to the movie-making charge. For the first time, the city will charge $18 an hour to prepare the Senior Citizens’ Center for use by outside groups. It will cost $225 each time a developer wants a city engineer to conduct a traffic study.

The filming fee came about because Simi Valley, with its picturesque hills and semi-rural landscape, has quietly built a reputation as an attractive location for directors of movie or television shows. In the past, TV’s “Little House on the Prairie” was filmed in the hills of Tapo Canyon. So was the miniseries “The Thorn Birds.”

In 1985, film crews used areas in and around Simi Valley 14 times. So far this year, at least 12 movies or television shows have been filmed in the city, including the recently released feature film “Three Amigos,” starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short, and TV’s “Knots Landing,” “The Twilight Zone” and “MacGyver.”

For all its popularity with Hollywood, Simi Valley proved earlier this year that it wasn’t about to concede to all the movie makers’ demands. In June, City Council rejected a proposal by state officials to close a three-mile stretch of the Simi Valley Freeway to allow filming of chase scenes for Sylvester Stallone’s movie “Over the Top.”

New Fee Not a Result

But city officials are quick to say the dispute over the Stallone picture had nothing to do with City Council’s decision to impose a $400 fee on film makers.

“It’s not related at all,” said Cox. “We actually started seven years ago working to get all our fees put together in one document so that they could be reviewed annually. The location fee is one that had not been previously included.

“It’s an area that had been overlooked in the past.”

The fee is intended to recoup the cost of having the city staff review an application for location filming, he said. The $400 fee falls into the average range--from $332 to $918--charged by other cities in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, Cox added.

The city sent letters to three film organizations informing them of the fee changes, Cox said, and there were no complaints.