Just nine hours before its 9 a.m. deadline, a divided City Council voted last night to petition the state legislature to preserve rent control for a maximum of five years, but only for certain categories of tenants.

Even before a vote could take place, however, leading tenant and landlord groups denounced the compromise as a sell-out and as a repudiation of democracy, respectively.

To rent control supporters' cries of "Shame, shame" the council voted 6-1-1 to adopt a 12-part home-rule petition that asks the state to keep rent control for some low- and moderate-income, elderly and handicapped tenants through 1999.

The 11:45 p.m. vote capped a week of daily city council meetings, as eight councillors strove to devise a response to the passage of Question 9--the ballot initiative repealing rent control that state voters approved November 8.

The 11-hour meeting was preceded by the arrest outside City Hall of one rent control supporter, Ellen AlWeQayan of Kirkland Street, after she slapped a Boston resident who owns property in Cambridge. Fearing a possible outbreak of violence following the vote, about 10 police officers stood guard outside the council chamber and in the lobby and stair-wells of City Hall.

Rep. Charles F. Flaherty (D-Cambridge), speaker of the state House of Representatives, warned last week that the council had to send a petition to Beacon Hill by morning today to have a chance of preventing the complete abolition of rent control on January 1, when Question 9 takes effect.

To take effect, the petition must still be passed by both houses of the legislature and signed by Gov. William F. Weld '66.

The six councillors who voted for the petition said it fails to provide adequate protection for rent-control tenants. But, faced with today's deadline and political necessity, they said it was the city's sole option.

"I don't see how anyone could possibly be pleased with the plan," Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55, who voted for it, told The Crimson.

"This is a fairly terrible plan, but I believe it's this plan or no plan," agreed Councillor Kathleen L. Born.

Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72, who had chaired the council's week-long negotiations, said the petition was the city's last hope.

"This is not what I want, what I would have done, what I designed, what I would like," Reeves told the council. "But I will not let tenants get pushed into the street because I was too radical to send something to the State House."

Katherine Triantafillou, the lone councillor to vote against the petition, said it did not contain modifications she thought the council had agreed upon.

"The summary I received today did not contain some of the changes I thought were going to be made," she told The Crimson.

Councillor Jonathan S. Myers, who abstained, tried to amend the compromise plan to include a "set-aside" clause that would allow large property owners to decontrol two-thirds of their units in exchange for designating one third for low- and moderate-income tenants.

"Unless there are other amendments, this would be the only compromise which would speak to low- and moderate-income tenants after the year 1999," Myers told the council before its 7-1 rejection of his amendment.