Ross Potter plans to retire as fire chief and director of protective services with the Town of Hay River.

Potter, who has filled the positions as a fulltime employee of the town for the past 10 years, will be retiring on June 1.

However, he is planning to remain involved with the fire department as a volunteer deputy chief, who like other members of the department will be paid per call.

"I'm still hanging around," he said. "I love what we do."

Potter said he will still be responding to calls after his retirement.

"I just don't want the full range of responsibilities," he said. "I want more time off, let's put it that way."

The 67-year-old Potter noted his target retirement date of June 1 is after the spring breakup of the Hay River and before the start of summer.

"It seems like a good date," he said. "Since I've become a career member of the department, my summers have been pretty much consumed with work. June is typically when breakup is all finished and over with and we're done all the reporting, and we're heading into fire season. So I tend to get a little bit busy during fire season. It makes a real difference to my camping. So I want to go camping this year."

Along with spending 10 years as a fulltime fire chief, Potter was volunteer chief for 12 years prior to that.

"I was able to lead a very good group of people who helped me reach my goals of getting the training up where it needed to be so that we had professional firefighters on the department, properly qualified EMS providers on the department, that type of thing," he said.

Potter joined the department in October of 1977, but in the intervening years he spent some time away from the role because of work commitments.

Overall, he estimates he has about 37 years of service with the department.

Potter said one person will be hired by the town to fill the roles of director of protective services and fire chief.

"We'll be posting the job by the end of this month, and we hope to have it filled by about March 15," he said. "It will be an open competition and I'm hoping to see some of my members apply, and, if they do, it would be awesome if they do get the job, to be honest."

Glenn Smith, the town's senior administrative officer, told the Jan. 11 online meeting of council about Potter's plans to retire.

Smith said it will be sad and difficult for the town to see Potter leave as fire chief and director of protective services, noting he provided top-tier leadership of the community's emergency services.

"Certainly the fire department, the town and the community as a whole are going to miss him in that role," said Smith.

Coun. Brian Willows thanked Potter for his help and support as fire chief and director of protective services.

Coun. Linda Duford said the town has been lucky to have Potter working for it for so many years.

Potter noted it was a really difficult decision to retire.

"I still don't know whether I'm really ready to do it, to be honest," he said. "But you have to set a date sometime."