Since taking over as director of the Montgomery County Animal Shelter in mid-December, the main focus for Charles Jackson has been getting animals out alive. Jackson first began working in the field in 2010 when he was hired in a leadership role at BARC, the city of Houston’s animal shelter and adoption facility. Since joining the Montgomery County Animal Shelter staff in December, Jackson said he has made cleanliness, transparency and customer service his main priorities.

What are your daily responsibilities and duties?

I am responsible for 62 employees, but more importantly, customer service is our No. 1 mission priority. I like to meet with our customers and constituents and hear what their concerns are and talk to them about what’s going on in the community and how they can help us bring some of that support into the shelter. Without the community’s help—no matter what I do here—we are doomed to fail. I want to make sure we’re a transparent organization, so that’s something that is important to me. It helps a lot when government explains why they’re doing what they’re doing. People see the big picture and are left to make decisions for themselves.

How successful were the shelter’s recent adoption initiatives?

When I came on board, I was lucky enough to meet with a group of volunteers who said, ‘How can we help? We want to help on day one.’ Just by looking at the numbers, [at the time] we had about 618 animals at the shelter, which is way beyond our capacity. In the month of December, you’d expect to see lower numbers because traditionally turn-ins go down at shelters in this area during the winter months. I was surprised by that and said we needed to get animals out of the shelter alive. I said, ‘Let’s do a sponsored adoption initiative.’ And they put in $5,000, and I said, ‘Let’s do $10 per adoption.’ To date, we’ve done over 600 adoptions in a little under 30 days. The downside to that is we’ve also taken in close to 1,000 animals in the same time period. With today’s inventory, we’re closer to 450 animals so it’s better.

What are two or three areas of improvement on which you plan to concentrate?

No. 1 has to be cleanliness. The shelter has to be clean. In shelter management, if you mess up everything else but you have a clean shelter, you’re in good shape. No. 2 is customer service. We’re a different kind of government entity in that we compete with the retail market. You don’t have to adopt an animal from the Montgomery County Animal Shelter. You can go anywhere you like. We want people to have a great experience here and come back and tell their friends and family.

What are you doing to improve cleanliness conditions at the shelter?

One of the first things I did was change the hours of operation. We were setting ourselves up for failure from the beginning. We have 425 cages and kennels we have to clean every day and 10 employees dedicated to that [task]. That’s 42.5 cages per person, which is at the higher end of what I’d like to do. We were taking an hour and forty-five minutes to clean 425 cages, and we told customers we opened at 10 a.m. for adoptions, but that [was not] true. We opened the door at 10 a.m. and they stood in the lobby for 30 minutes waiting for us to finish. We open the doors now at 11:30 a.m., and that gives us enough time to clean the cages, move the animals, medicate and take care of them and be ready for our customers so they have our full attention.

What are some ideas to get the community more involved?

We’ve got to be more transparent. The community has to know that we exist and that we’re here, and that there’s a need. Transparency and communication is vital so people become interested in what we’re doing here. I want to put together a volunteer program and a rescue program that is streamlined and communicates effectively. That way the community knows when they make a phone call or send an email that we’re responding to it, and more people get involved. I want to get wins under my belt for the Montgomery County Animal Shelter.