WILLIAMSBURG — By a wide margin, voters Saturday elected Paul Wetzel to fill the vacant seat on the Select Board.

With almost a quarter of the electorate turning out to vote, Wetzel received 361 votes against 101 for Richard Kisloski and six for Patrick Sumner.

Town Clerk Brenda Lessard said 469 ballots were cast, representing 22% of registered voters in town.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had a Saturday election,” Lessard said. “We had a lot of positive feedback on it.”

Wetzel, 61, who has chaired the town’s Finance Committee for many years, takes the Select Board seat left vacant by the death of David Mathers in July. The other board members are William Sayre and Denise Banister.

Wetzel also has served on two building committees, helping to determine where the new Public Safety Complex should be built and whether to save the Helen E. James School that was on the site.

“That was a big decision,” he said Monday.

He was instrumental in securing a $1.8 million Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) grant last year to build a solar power generation station at the Public Safety Complex. Solar panels will be installed on the roof and over the parking lot and are expected to generate power for the complex itself and all municipal buildings except the school, Wetzel said.

He also has served on another MVP working group, which landed a $682,085 grant this summer to study the Mill River watershed.

An environmental scientist by training, Wetzel manages Smith College’s Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station, a 250-acre patchwork of forest and pasture land in Whately for environmental research and outdoor education.

A native of Michigan, Wetzel moved east when his wife, Carolyn, got a job at Smith College. He has lived in Williamsburg since 2005.

He said he started to think about serving on the Select Board over the last year.

“Being on the Finance Committee is pretty good preparation,” he said with a chuckle, observing that the committee comprises a range of views and competing interests.

He said his approach initially on the Select Board will be to listen and learn. He plans to contact all the department heads and find out where they see challenges and opportunities.

Wetzel will step down from the Finance Committee, and the Select Board will appoint a replacement to serve until the next election in May, Lessard said.

James Pentland can be reached at jpentland@gazettenet.com.