PROVO — An 11th-hour request by Brigham Young University late Tuesday afternoon persuaded the Provo City Council to postpone a vote on limiting parking on the streets south of campus.

The BYU letter arrived at 4:15 p.m., just 75 minutes before the council met for dinner prior to its two meetings on Tuesday night. Several on the council were already interested in delaying the vote, and as they ate, council members immediately built a unanimous consensus to grant the university's request.

The council voted to postpone a decision until Jan. 22, to allow more time to work with BYU officials and students.

"We've been asking for some period of time for a dialogue," council Chairman George Stewart said. "We will now be having a dialogue."

BYU's late leap into the fray was prompted by a stark about-face executed by the council. Originally, the on-street parking permit program was designed to force landlords in the neighborhood to stop renting to more tenants than city ordinance allows. Over the past two weeks, the proposal morphed into a program to keep commuters from parking on the streets.

"If the city is going to change the focus of its parking program, we ask for additional time and discussion to re-evaluate how we should consider parking when contracting for student housing," wrote BYU housing director Julie Franklin.

BYU allows students under the age of 25 to live off campus only in apartments that have BYU-contracted housing (previously known as BYU-approved housing). The contracts require landlords to enforce certain standards, including the university honor code.

"With regard to the revised residential parking proposal under review, we recommend delaying a final decision until its actual impact can be further analyzed and better understood," Franklin added.

The proposal would limit parking on the streets in the North Joaquin Neighborhood, which stretches from 500 North to BYU's southern border on 800 North and from University Avenue to 900 East. Only neighborhood residents would get permits to park on those streets from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. between Sept. 1 and the following April 30. The council is considering including some visitor parking spots along each block.

The permits would cost $25 per year and be issued only to qualifying landlords.

City leaders have been working with incomplete data. They learned last week, based on the city's rental dwelling licenses, that approval has been granted for 11,991 singles to live in the entire Joaquin Neighborhood, which stretches south to Center Street. That larger area has just 11,289 total on- and off-street parking spots. The city hasn't been able to break down that information to detail how many students and parking spots there are in North Joaquin alone.