Alna’s cost to keep its roads clear is spiking next winter and seeing smaller hikes for two years after that. Voters will gather at the Alna Meetinghouse on August 25 to raise the extra cash needed for the first year of a three-year deal with the town’s new contractor.

A Damariscotta firm that plows for that town, Newcastle and Nobleboro was the lone bidder on the contract up for grabs for the first time in years.

Selectmen on August 6 reviewed Hagar Enterprises’ three-year offer and unanimously agreed to accept it. The first year’s $191,000 tab is an 18.8 percent jump from the $161,095 budgeted at the annual town meeting last March, based on what Alna was paying Mark Hanley, officials said. But Hanley declined to renew his contract, leaving selectmen to go out to bid on one of the town’s biggest spending items.

Third Selectman David Reingardt was surprised more contractors didn’t bid. But he said the higher cost Hagar’s bid came in at is about what the town would have been paying by now, if Hanley hadn’t kept his fee flat for years. It’s comparable to an approximate annual hike of 3 percent over about the last six years, that instead the town is seeing in one year, he said.

Year two of the deal calls for the town to pay $197,000; year three, $202,000, selectmen said.

Hagar Enterprises views its work for towns as being about building relationships with them, Hagar said. It supplies the sand for Newcastle and Damariscotta; but Nobleboro, like Alna, provides its own, he said. Hagar told the board that the firm will make an offer the next time Alna seeks bids for sand.

“We, as a company, are open to anything with the town. We would sit down for anything,” he said.

The $30,000 difference between what voters approved and what the town will pay Hagar the first year means the amount raised will run out before all the payments have been made, Second Selectman Jonathan Villeneuve said. Selectmen plan to ask voters at the 7 p.m., Monday, Aug. 25 special town meeting to raise $35,000 more for snow removal: the $30,000 for Hagar and $5,000 in case sand and salt cost more this year. Raising that $5,000 contingency would avoid calling voters back to another special town meeting, board members said.