Following nearly a year and a half of wide-ranging and sometimes emotional debate about the impact of large houses on the rural character of Chilmark, voters overwhelmingly approved a new bylaw to limit house size at their annual town meeting this week.

How to preserve the rural character of Chilmark while planning for the future: the question is expected to take center stage when voters consider a proposed bylaw to regulate house size at their annual town meeting Monday night.

After a few years of annual town meetings that were quiet and largely routine, the Chilmark warrant is packed with weighty issues this year, including an $8.1 million operating budget, up nearly five per cent over last year, largely due to increased education costs.

The ink is drying on the final version of a Chilmark bylaw to regulate house size that is now set for a vote at the annual town meeting in April.

The planning board ratified a final version of the bylaw on Monday. Town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport will review the language in the coming weeks.

As heated debate continues to swirl in Chilmark and beyond over how and whether to regulate very large houses, town planning board leaders said this week they were ready to send a draft bylaw to town counsel for review.

At a crowded public hearing Wednesday, the Chilmark zoning board of appeals heard the first public arguments in a heated dispute between neighbors over a large-house compound that is nearing completion on Nashaquitsa Pond.

The Chilmark planning board this week took up the thorny subject of large houses, their impact on the environment and how to regulate them.

At a special meeting Wednesday afternoon that drew a small crowd, the planning board announced the formation of a large house working group charged with determining whether existing zoning bylaws should be changed to limit house sizes.

Planning board chairman Janet Weidner said it would be the first of many discussions.