Election fever is far from over. The Wareham Fire District is holding its elections for the Prudential Committee and the Board of Water Commissioners on Saturday, April 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Water Department building, located at 2550 Cranberry Highway.

There are two open seats for three-year terms on the Prudential Committee, with four candidates for those seats: incumbent Ron Enos, incumbent Elizabeth L. Pezzoli, Kenneth A. Baptiste, who served on the Prudential Committee from 2005 to 2011, and Cara M. Pillsbury, a newcomer who says she is running a write-in campaign for a spot.

One seat for a three-year term on the Board of Water Commissioners will also be on the ballot. There are three candidates for that race: incumbent Theodore S. Hatch, Frank DeFelice, and Lynne Burroughs.

Prudential Committee

Incumbent Ron Enos, a 40-year Wareham resident, said that fiscal responsibility was the hallmark of the three years he has been in office.

"We continue to run a tight budget with pretty good customer satisfaction," said Enos, who has been with the Committee for one term. "I've enjoyed the 3 years I've been working there. It's like I've been running a small business."

Enos, who is 57 years old, said that he has worked in the business world for 32 years. He has been vice president of the eastern division of Altura, a telecommunications company in California, for 21 years.

Enos started and sits on the Prudential Committee's "capital improvement subcommittee," which takes a "long-term maintenance perspective" for the purchases of expensive items such as vehicles and buildings.

Enos helped start a 10-year building maintenance plan to ensure funding for the upkeep of Fire District buildings. He also helped with a 30-year road plan for the replacement and maintenance of vehicles.

If elected, he said he would like to continue his work, "take it to a higher level, and continue the progress that this board has made."

Enos lives in Burgess Point in Wareham and is married with 2 sons.

Kenneth A. Baptiste, who served on the Prudential Committee from 2005 to 2011, said that he simply loves the Wareham Fire District and working on the Committee.

"I've always been involved with the Fire Department," said Baptiste, who added that he had been an on-call fireman for 34 years. "I'm doing this because I love to do it, because I want to help."

Baptiste said that if elected to the Committee again, he would like to continue the work that he started in past years.

When he was first elected 7 years ago, Baptiste said, the Committee's accounts were not properly managed.

One of the problems was that the Committee got its accounts audited every three years -- the minimum requirement set by the state, and the Department of Revenue was in constant communication with the Fire District, Baptiste said.

After Baptiste joined, he said, he helped straighten out the finances, and now the Committee conducts audits every year. "We worked hard and diligently to get that straightened out," he said.

Baptiste said he also helped add two employees to the Treasurer's Office, a secretary and a certified public accountant. Adding the extra workforce was necessary to help the office, which formerly had only one employee, become more efficient, he noted.

Baptiste also helped get the bylaws of the Wareham Fire District reviewed in order "to bring it up to date because the District has grown so much," he said.

Baptise, who is 57 years old, lives in East Wareham and has one daughter and one son.

Elizabeth Pezzoli has been involved with the Fire District in one way or another for quite some time, she said.

She used to follow the district in her previous career as a newspaper reporter, but became more directly involved 9 years ago when she first ran for the Prudential Committee.

Pezzoli is now running for her fourth term in office.

Pezzoli remarked that streamlining the mechanics department, which does repairs of equipment, was one of her major achievements in office.

"One of the biggest problems we had was the mechanics department, it wasn't producing as it should," she said. "There were two people before, now one person is there, and it's running more efficiently."

Pezzoli first ran for office because she "thought it needed a woman, actually. I'm the only one on the two boards," she said, referring to the Board of Water Commissioners and the Prudential Committee. "I'm a voice of moderation … guys get gung-ho when they want this or that, but I question a lot."

Pezzoli was a reporter from 1976 to about 1996, working for the newspapers the Standard-Times and the Brockton Enterprise. She then started the Wareham Observer in mid-1998, but eventually left that newspaper. The experience gave her connections that still help her in her position on the Prudential Committee, she said.

"Even though I'm no longer a reporter or a publisher, people still come to me to tell me what's happening in town," Pezzoli said. "I have a good ear for listening and I'm never shy about offering advice."

Cara Pillsbury is running as a write-in candidate for the Prudential Committee.

Pillsbury said she wanted to run for the Committee this year, but was concerned about her ability to serve because her son has recently been sick. His recovery period has turned out to be shorter than anticipated, she said, and she decided to try for a seat through the write-in process.

Pillsbury, who is running for an elected position for the first time, said that she would like to bring "new insight" to the Committee and see people become more involved with the district. She also said she would like to concentrate on improving the Wareham Fire Department.

"My main focus is to put the politics aside and I want to work with the Fire Department and their needs," she said.

Pillsbury, who moved to Wareham nine years ago, is married and has four children. Her husband is a police officer, she said, which helps her understand the needs faced by emergency officials. She said she would like to make sure the police and fire departments have modernized equipment.

Pillsbury is a currently a member of the Council on Aging. She is also co-owner of Community Mini Storage on Cranberry Highway, which she said has given her skills in accounting, bookkeeping, and business policy-making, which will help her if elected to the Prudential Committee.

Board of Water Commissioners

If there is one thing that incumbent Theodore S. Hatch brings to the Board of Water Commissioners, it is experience. He has been a Water Commissioner since 1997.

Hatch said that his utmost priority if he is re-elected is to "make sure there is a supply of water for future generations."

Hatch said that during his tenure, he has been involved with a substantial expansion of the town's water mains. He has also worked on the addition of wells, including the "Seawood 8 Well," in the Charge Pond Road area and the new Maple Park well site.

Hatch has also been concerned with continually updating the Water Department's 25-year plan. The plan takes into account maintenance of the water mains and water towers.

The plan also sets forth measures to ensure that there is an adequate supply of water for the town, such as by purchasing land that surrounds well fields in order to protect the well and water supply from contamination.

"We're being proactive, and trying to have a vision of looking forward," Hatch said.

Hatch, who is Wareham native and is retired from the Massachusetts Department of Correction, said he would like to continue to serve the district as Water Commissioner. "It's a real positive challenge for me in my life," said the 64-year-old East Wareham resident who is married with 3 children and 5 grandchildren. "I really enjoy doing it."

Frank X. DeFelice, current chair of the Board of Health, said he wants to bring more transparency to the Wareham Fire District's operations.

"Let's look a little bit closer and see if we can do it better than they way [the district] has been doing it," DeFelice said.

DeFelice said he doesn't believe that customers who undergo water betterments when their property is "bettered" by the addition of a new water line, are being charged fairly and equitably. He said Water Department does not take into account the owner's cost of dividing the land into multiple lots or of installing a septic system, for example, when it assesses the property in order to calculate the betterment fee.

"They're putting people in jeopardy of losing their property because they're overcharging on betterments," DeFelice said.

DeFelice said he is also concerned about the process for appealing the betterments. Speaking from his own experience and from the experience of acquaintances, DeFelice said that the Water Department doesn't tell customers the date of the appeal, and calls the customer to tell them that they lost after the appeal is over.

"If you go in front of them, they say, 'sue us,'" DeFelice said. "That's why I'm running. To stop the way that they operate."

DeFelice has been a building commissioner in the Town of Eastham for the past 11 years. He has been married for 36 years, and has a daughter and a son.

Candidate Lynne Burroughs said that her primary concern is keeping the water supply safe by preventing chemicals from entering into it.

Burroughs' daughter is allergic to chlorine, and cannot drink the town water, Burroughs said.

Burroughs herself has Lupus, an auto-immune disorder that is made worse by the consumption of metals such as fluoride.

Burroughs used to live in Sharon, which was the first town in Massachusetts to include fluoride in their drinking water, Burroughs said. Burroughs said her doctor, a rheumatologist, believes that it was the fluoride in the water that triggered the Lupus.

Burroughs would like to make sure that stories such as hers do not happen in Wareham.

"Everybody should be able to drink the water," Burroughs said. "I want my daughter to be able to drink the water."

By adding chemicals to the water, she said, "we can end up making it harmful to ourselves."

Burroughs, who recently ran for a position on the School Committee, said that she planned on running for the Board of Water Commissioners before that, and planned on serving on both boards if elected. Serving on both boards would have been permissible since one was for the town of Wareham and the other was for the Wareham Fire District.

Burroughs is currently the president of the Wareham Special Education Parent Advisory Council, a group that works on ensuring the needs of kids with special needs are met in the District schools.

She is also full member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Aging.

Burroughs has lived in Wareham for 7 years, and is married with two daughters and 1 son.