KEY POINTS:
Napier City Council is likely to start the countdown to the closure of Marineland with a vote at its meeting tomorrow.
Mayor Barbara Arnott is recommending the closure takes place when the last-surviving dolphin, 38-year-old Kelly, dies.
In a largely expected aftermath of a report last month from the parliamentary local government and environment committee, she wants the council to confirm that when Kelly dies, Marineland close to the public.
Mrs Arnott also recommends that a strategy identified in 2001 but never released to the public be put in place. This is expected to complete the facility's transformation from Marine Parade tourism icon to marine hospital and education centre.
It will leave the city with decisions about what to do with the space occupied by its main pools and grandstand, a first-port-of-call for hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers in the heyday after Marineland opened in January 1965.
Yesterday, Mayor Arnott said it wasn't the "appropriate" time to discuss what could happen to the site, but she expected that "in time" the public would be asked for their views on how it might be used.
The outcome of tomorrow's vote was by no means a formality, she said, but after numerous reviews it had effectively been forced by the Parliamentary committee's report, a response to a petition presented by MP Russell Fairbrother on behalf of more than 13,500 signatories calling for the Government to permit and financially support the replacement of the dolphins.
The report concluded that it would not be appropriate to call on the Department of Conservation to change its policy to allow the keeping of new dolphins.
Kelly has been a Marineland feature since December 1974. She has been the only performing dolphin since 36-year-old Shona died in April 2006.
Her own performances have become fewer depending on health and state of mind, but Marineland manager Gary Macdonald said he hoped she would still be cavorting in the pool next summer.
"She's remarkably consistent for such an old girl."
- HAWKE'S BAY TODAY
