PULASKI -- Town council members narrowly decided Tuesday to keep intact a teen curfew law after Councilman Morgan Welker motioned first to repeal the ordinance, then to tighten the ordinance's language when the repeal proposal failed.

The repeal failed 1-4 with H.M. Kidd abstaining and Welker voting for the measure. When Welker introduced a compromise that would have more narrowly defined "loitering" in the ordinance, the vote was tied at 3-3. Mayor Jeff Worrell cast a rare tie-breaking vote against Welker's proposal, siding with Robert Bopp, Larry Clevinger Jr. and David Clark.

Asked why he abstained from voting on Welker's first proposal but cast a vote for the next, Kidd said, "I wasn't sure what he had said. I wasn't sure quite what he was asking."

While the vote was procedural and would have only directed town staff to schedule a public hearing required before changes to the town code are made, the council's discussion raised questions about whether the ordinance contains language that police can interpret broadly.

The curfew bars anyone under 18 from loitering on town streets or on private property after 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and after midnight on weekends. The law contains exemptions for teens with their parents or traveling between work.

Welker's compromise would have defined loitering as remaining idle in one location for 15 minutes or longer. It was designed to protect teenagers walking to and from work from being subject to police stops. But Town Attorney David Warburton told the council, "There's nothing in this ordinance that criminalizes walking to and from anywhere."

He also took issue with Welker's comments that curfews violate civil rights, saying the Supreme Court's refusal to take up curfew challenges offers little guidance about constitutionality. Warburton acknowledged, however, that the concerns Welker raised about the definition of loitering illustrates "the difficulty of placing in police power a word that is subject to different interpretations."

Welker also questioned whether the curfew took decisions out of the hands of parents, but Pulaski Police Chief Gary Roche wrote in a memo provided to the council that, "Our community has a significant number of our households that maintain very relaxed or nonexistent supervision of their children.

"We also find underage, sometimes significantly underage, females in the accompaniment of adult males," Roche wrote. "This ordinance provides a tool to intercede into these situations and provide a safety net for those girls."

The discussion Tuesday was the only one held on the curfew since Welker called for its repeal Aug. 5, and it wrapped up significantly faster than in 2006, when the council raised the age of teenagers affected by the ordinance from 16 to 18 and added exemptions for work and school activities. Town Manager John Hawley said those discussions took several weeks. Welker said he has no plans to bring the proposal before the council again.