Town Meeting voters decided not to rescind an affordable housing-related article first approved last year. They also voted against updating that bylaw to address issues within it that were identified by the state’s Attorney General.

The measure passed last year — authored by former Select Board member and current candidate Brenda Eckstrom — was intended to promote the creation of state-certified affordable housing units by allowing property owners to subdivide lots in certain neighborhoods and allowing some currently illegal apartments and in-law units to be deeded as affordable housing. In addition to providing more affordable housing in town, a secondary goal was to bring the town closer to the state-set threshold of 10 percent affordable housing to give the town more control over development proposals that include affordable housing.

While the Attorney General’s office approved last year’s bylaw, allowing it to go into effect, the office suggested reworking the bylaw to make sure any units created through it would be counted toward the 10 percent threshold.

To that end, both Eckstrom and Town Planner Ken Buckland reached out to the state for clarification on how to bring the bylaw into accord with state laws. 

Simultaneously, the Select Board — at the urging of member Peter Teitelbaum — asked Town Meeting to scrap the bylaw entirely. Their argument was that, even as amended, it would not be clear that all the housing units constructed by property owners who used it would "count" as affordable. Teitelbaum said Eckstrom didn’t bring her revised bylaw to the Town Planner or Town Counsel for review, and has said he believed it still had problems. 

On Monday, voters were asked both to rescind the original article passed last year and to pass updates to it. The motion to rescind the vote was brought by Teitelbaum, who said Eckstrom didn’t bring her work to update the law for review by town counsel or the town planner.

Teitelbaum said the existing bylaw needs to be taken off the books to protect some neighborhoods from further density as the benefit of the law — adding units to the affordable housing stock — seems null at this point. 

Eckstrom said she was denied the use of counsel.

Voter Ervin Russell said he thought rescinding the law was “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” — a sentiment shared by voter Barry Cosgrove, who said that “throwing it out now is completely illogical.”

The vote to rescind the article failed as it did not reach a two-thirds majority. 

Over an hour later — and after many voters had left — Eckstrom’s updates to the bylaw came up for a vote. She argued that her changes would guarantee that units produced through the bylaw would be counted as affordable and that voting against the update was, in effect, a vote in favor of leaving a flawed bylaw on the books. 

“The new draft still has problems with the text,” said Mike King, reporting for the Planning Board, which voted to recommend further study.

Town Meeting did not vote to update the text of the bylaw. That means that the original, flawed version will stay in effect.