SAUGUS – An article addressing illegal in-law apartments is headed back to Town Meeting, but it’s still getting a lackluster reception.Last spring Selectman Michael Kelleher authored an article calling for the legalization of the town’s illegal in-law apartments. In-law apartments are allowable for immediate family members, but they cannot be rented. Any in-law apartment that is being rented is considered illegal.Town Moderator Robert Long said because the article would affect zoning, it needed a recommendation by the Planning Board. But Kelleher said he has learned the Planning Board is sending the article back to Town Meeting.Long has made no secret that he is against the article.Kelleher’s article is similar to a plan devised by a committee of Town Meeting members headed up by former meeting member Peter Rossetti.Under both plans, homeowners would be granted amnesty for having the apartment but would be required to take out a permit at a cost of $1,000.Kelleher said if there are in fact up to 1,500 illegal apartments, as many town officials estimate, that would net the town $1.5 million, plus additional yearly taxes.Like Rossetti’s proposal, however, Kelleher’s has yet to hit the floor of Town Meeting and Long is not sure it’s ready yet.Long said his main issue with legalizing the apartments is that it opens the way for doing away with single-family zoning. He argues that if there is even one illegal apartment in each neighborhood in town the neighborhoods would have to be rezoned.”It sounds good on the surface,” he said. “You get $1,000 but it changes the neighborhood. Neighbors are going to say, ‘What they have, I want,’ and how does the ZBA (Zoning Board of Appeals) deny that?”Long said there are neighborhoods, such as his, that simply weren’t built to sustain multi-family housing.”The streets are too narrow, the houses are too close,” he said. “If you make this by-right it will radically change what Saugus is.”Kelleher, however, argues that if the illegal apartments already exist, residents are living in single-family neighborhoods in name only anyway.Long said if he had a choice between legalizing the apartments and removing the apartments, he’d choose to remove them.He also said he believed that the community’s exploration of mixed use, which would allow apartments to be built over businesses, was a more efficient and more responsible way to look at zoning.”My real fear is the elimination of single-family zoning and its ramifications,” he said.Kelleher said his fear is that illegal apartments would continue to plague the community since there is nothing to deter residents from creating them.Fire Chief James Blanchard said he would like to see illegal apartments addressed namely because it affects his funding.”We see illegal apartments all the time and we have an obligation to notify the building department,” he said. “But what really bothers me is those people receive our services, which is fine, but they’re not on our census.”Blanchard said he has applied for grants where if the population of the town was listed at just 5,000 more, he would have been eligible for as much as $20,000 more in funding.”And I know we have at least 15,000 more people,” he said. “It’s really frustrating.”The issue will come back before Town Meeting during its annual spring meeting.