For more than a month now, Hall County officials have been working to craft a motion picture and film industry ordinance for the county. The county's Board of Commissioners will take up the issue for a second reading this week.
The idea of the ordinance was first introduced at a March 6 commission work session, where county officials proposed permits and even a business license for any movie company looking to film in Hall County.
That same week, Stacey Dickson, the president of the Lake Lanier Convention and Visitors Bureau, came to the commission voting session, encouraging the board to be cautious with restrictions they placed on movie makers, noting that anything too stringent might push them to take their business to other Georgia counties.
"There may be communities that have been doing films in California that can get away with the fees that are being proposed in this ordinance, but we're not quite there yet," said Dickson said at the March 9 meeting.
Dickson worked with officials in the Hall County business licensing office to soften the language and requirements of the ordinance, while at the same time, making sure the Hall County citizens would be protected when movie-makers set up shop in communities in the county.
County commissioners got a look at an updated version of the ordinance at a March 20 work session, but details were not released publicly at that time. When the commission met in a special called meeting on March 22, the entire agenda - including the movie ordinance - was tabled.
According to an agenda from the county commission, the movie ordinance is up for discussion among commission members at their Monday work session. Any vote would not come until the Thursday meeting, however.
The Hall County Commission work session is scheduled for Monday, April 13 at 3 p.m. at the county government offices on Browns Bridge Road in Gainesville.
