By LEAH WEATHERSBY

After working towards a new residential parking zone for Phinney Ridge on the south side of the Woodland Park Zoo for nearly a year, neighborhood residents have learned that the City has delayed implementation of an RPZ until at least next year.

According to Bill Jack, traffic control programs manager with the Seattle Department of Transportation, his department has lost all of its funding for new residential parking zones, or RPZs, due to budget shortfalls from Initiative 722, which voters approved this past fall. I-722 limits the amount that property taxes can be raised and nullifies certain tax and fee increases from 1999.

Jack said that if I-722 is overturned, the Seattle Department of Transportation, also known as Sea Tran, can begin implementing new RPZs again. Until then, he said, neighborhoods like Phinney Ridge that want to add RPZs may have to seek funding themselves from the Cityıs Neighborhood Matching Fund program.

This is good news for the Woodland Park Zoo, who estimated that they would lose $1.5 million to $2 million per year if the RPZ went in. This is because zoo visitors would simply find that there was nowhere to park, according to zoo officials.

The loss of the funding is bad news for Phinney Ridge residents such as Stan and Lorraine Chalicki, who helped lead the signature-gathering campaign to place an RPZ in the area just south of the zoo, between N. 46th and N. 50th Street, and Aurora Avenue and Phinney Avenue N.

Residents of the area had proposed limiting parking to two hours only from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. Lorraine Chalicki said that they were well on their way to getting the necessary signatures from 60 percent of the residents on each block proposed for the RPZ and had hoped to submit the petitions by the end of February.

Stan Chalicki said that the parking problem in his neighborhood has gotten steadily worse since he moved there in 1986. These days, he said, sunny days are a mixed blessing.

³Within half an hour of the sun coming out, the traffic comes out,² he said.

Stan Chalicki said he and his wife decided to pursue an RPZ last year when they heard that the zoo depended on the neighborhood to provide close to 40 percent of their visitor parking. ³Thatıs not our job,² he said.

Neighbors on the north side of the the zoo have also grappled with parking problems for years. Corey Satten, who lives just north of the zoo, said that the idea of an RPZ had been around for a while, but that an RPZ on the south side made it likely the north would soon follow suit. Thatıs because more zoo visitors would inevitably park on the north side of the zoo once they found their parking was limited on the other end. This could cause a chain reaction with west side streets joining the RPZ as well, according to Satten.

However, because of I-722 it appears Phinney Ridge neighbors will have to wait for parking relief.

For zoo officials, I-722 has given them a reprieve ‹ at least for now.

Woodland Park Zoo Director Mike Waller said his organization voiced its concerns about the RPZ and the potential loss of revenue to the Sea Tran. The zoo has also spoken to the City Council.

The Woodland Park Zooıs current parking woes were accurately forecast in a 1988 report by Gardner Consultants Inc., which predicted that zoo attendance would grow to 1.2 million visitors annually by the early 1990s. The report strongly recommended ³that an additional 820 (parking) spaces should be provided at or near zoo grounds² to accommodate the increased attendance.

While the report acknowledged that the zoo might have difficulties adding that many parking spaces ³because both space and development capital are limited,² it also added: ³on the other hand, it would be imprudent to increase attendance substantially without providing suitable increases in parking facilities.²

What Woodland Park Zoo wound up doing instead in the early 1990s was to add 30-40 surface parking spaces. Waller said the zoo originally wanted to add 75 parking spaces, but agreed to a lesser number after receiving objections from the community. Neighbors wanted to preserve the landscaping that would have been removed to make way for the parking space, he said.

Woodland Park Zoo attracted nearly 1.13 million visitors in the year 2000.

Waller points out that Woodland Park Zooıs new master plan, which has yet to receive approval from the City, includes a new parking garage, which would add approximately 750 spaces.

However, because there is currently no funding for the project, the earliest a parking garage could open would be 2003, said zoo spokesman Jim Maxwell.

Waller also said that the zoo has tried to reduce parking impacts on the neighborhood in several ways including offering free ³early bird² parking before 10:30 a.m. and selling fewer tickets to zoo concerts.