Ten minutes before the deadline, Mayor Marion Barry's top political adviser filed petitions yesterday to place Barry on the November ballot as an independent candidate for an at-large D.C. Council seat.

The mayor, who returned this week from a vacation in Jamaica, did not make an appearance. [Anita Bonds] delivered a three-inch stack of yellow petitions that she said contained nearly twice the 3,000 signatures Barry needed to qualify to run for the seat he held on the council before he ran for mayor 12 years ago.

Bonds said that Barry plans to kick off his campaign about a week after the Sept. 11 primary. On Sept. 17, U.S. Attorney Jay B. Stephens is scheduled to announce whether he intends to seek a retrial on any of the 12 drug and perjury charges that a federal jury was unable to agree on earlier this month. Barry was convicted of one misdemeanor charge of cocaine possession and acquitted on another possession charge.