Maher said he expects a completed version of the plan to be available to the public on Thursday. He said he thought the council would be ready to vote at Friday’s meeting, after hearing public comment from residents.

“If we’re able to deliver on the concepts that we’ve been working on, I think the council will see the mutual benefit and will pass the petition,” Maher said.

If the council needs more time to debate the zoning plan, the vote could be postponed until next Monday’s regular meeting.

Harvard officials were not present for the meeting between councillors and Riverside residents yesterday, but Thomas J. Lucey, Harvard’s director of community relations for Cambridge, said the University was “working very hard with the appropriate people in the city.”

With elections coming up on Nov. 4, residents have emphasized in recent weeks that their votes will go to the councillors who fight for the interests of the neighborhood.

“Exercise due diligence and vigilance as you craft this negotiation,” Cob Carlson, the first signer of the petition that now bears his name, told the councillors last night.

Decker, who has been one of the council’s most vocal advocates of the Carlson petition, said she hoped an agreement could be reached that offered benefits to the community.

“I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that the neighborhood will prevail,” she said.

—Staff writer Jessica R. Rubin-Wills can be reached at rubinwil@fas.harvard.edu.