Candidates for the Cambridge City Council lined up against Harvard development in Riverside at a town meeting last night.

The meeting, which featured 16 of the 20 candidates running for nine spots on the council, provided a forum for discussion of a controversial petition to limit Harvard growth beside the Charles.

Citing the importance of preserving river views, all the candidates spoke against Harvard’s proposal to built housing on the lot now occupied by the Mahoney Garden Center.

Still, however, only four of the nine current city councilors have endorsed the measure that will ban new Harvard buildings in Riverside over 24 feet tall.

The petition must be approved by at least three quarters of the council members before the Oct. 28 deadline.

“[The plan] has nothing to do with limiting the amount of housing...We wouldn’t be fighting if the University didn’t have alternative locations,” said Cambridge resident Cob Carlson, who was the first to sign the petition.

He said that the University could build on 370 available acres in Allston and 144 in Cambridge without having to encroach on Riverside.

Although the measure is widely supported by the Cambridge community, it has floated for almost three years.

Several of the candidates were embarrassed by the council’s failure to vote on it.

“I want to see the issue resolved,” said Matt S. DeBergalis, who is running for council.

“The city council has embarrassed itself in the way [the issue] has been handled. It’s important to respect the wishes of the neighborhood,” he said.

However, DeBergalis—an MIT graduate—said he wanted to keep students in the city.

“We shouldn’t ship students out of Cambridge,” he said. “These are people who bring a lot to our city. The universities have brought a lot of good to the city.”

Other candidates were less supportive of universities in the Cambridge area.

“Some of my colleagues do a better job for Harvard than Harvard does for itself,” said councilor Marjorie C. Decker, who, like several of her colleagues, asserted that Harvard and MIT had been outmaneuvering the city for too long.

“Giving the universities what they want doesn’t define reasonable,” she said.