Alna fire officials hope town meeting voters will green light a $6 an hour, firefighter pay hike and the rest of a recruitment plan. Without it, the department may eventually go the way of the Alna First Responders that ended in 2015, Fire Chief Mike Trask said.

Trask is proposing members’ $12 an hour pay go to $18; their paid training hours go from 30 to 40 hours a year; the chief’s $3,000 stipend go to $5,000; the assistant chief’s $2,000 go to $4,000; and that each of three captains’ stipends hike from their current $500, to $1,500. Trask also wants to offer a $25,000 life insurance policy he said would cost the town $6,855 a year for 20 firefighters.

Selectmen Tuesday night said they would need to check with Second Selectman Melissa Spinney, who was absent, before deciding whether to recommend voters pass each piece of the proposal in full. But they expressed early support for paying firefighters and fire officials more.

“I don’t think it’s excessive for what they’re doing,” First Selectman David Abbott said. “It’s up to the town,” he added.

The town pays road workers $18 an hour and paid that much for a resident’s community service work, Trask said. The new rate would surpass the fire department’s 10-year plan by $3 an hour, but, he said, considering firefighters’ skills and willingness to leave work or home at any hour, he thought the request was reasonable.

Pay is a recruitment tool, Trask told selectmen. The average age on the department is 54, he said. “In 10 years, where are their replacements going to be? If you don’t get them, the fire department will be dead in the water.

“Then people are going to wonder what they’re going to do,” Trask added.

According to fire officials, the department still gets new members, but not enough to replace those who leave. “We’re slowly getting a net loss,” Assistant Fire Chief Roger Whitney said.

Increased regulations have firefighters putting in more time, some of it unpaid, officials said. There will still be unpaid training time even with the 10-hour increase, they said.

Some members have left due to lost pay at work, and younger residents tend not to join, officials said.

Town meeting is March 19. Plans call for the raises and the proposal’s other parts to each be a separate question, and separate from the department’s $66,295 budget offer, up $1,598 from 2015, fire officials said.