What Kind of Enterprse Zone?
It’s not clear exactly what Los Angeles City Council President Gil Garcetti has in mind for new or expanded enterprise zones to help the film industry in L.A. The Los Angeles Daily News reports:
With Hollywood facing its second major strike of the year, a Los Angeles city official on Tuesday called for more municipal effort to accommodate the film industry and state legislation to give it job-training credits.
“Without Hollywood there is no Tinseltown,” council President Eric Garcetti said after introducing a proposal to expand enterprise zones and tax credits the city offers and to develop proposals to accommodate film shoots around the city.
Garcetti said he and Councilman Tom LaBonge believe the city needs to do more to keep productions - and their jobs - in the city.
Among proposals to be studied are building electrical plug-ins on streets to avoid the use of large generators, improving the facades of buildings and restoring historical sites.
Garcetti cited the potential of a strike this week by the Screen Actors Guild, which would come on the heels of the Writers Guild strike earlier this year. The writers strike cost the region an estimated $1 billion in direct income and in revenue to other industries.
SAG is scheduled to announce Thursday whether it will call a strike.
Garcetti said he hopes to create three enterprise zones - Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley and downtown Los Angeles - to provide job credits for the entertainment industry.
“One of the issues we have to deal with is the requirement that these be full-time jobs,” Garcetti said. “With the industry, a lot of the jobs are seasonal. What we hope to do is work with companies that have multiple productions to keep people working on a steady basis.”
Garcetti and LaBonge also said they want to see an analysis of the revenue the city lost when “Ugly Betty” TV producers moved their show out of Los Angeles.
Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., embraced the proposals.
“Anything the city can do to help is welcome,” Kyser said.
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