New animal care chief comes full circle

PALMER - Phil Morgan, the new chief of the Mat-Su Borough's Animal Care and Regulation Department, has come a long way in a couple of ways.

First, there's the distance he traveled to get here. Morgan lived in Southern California for 40 years. He graduated from high school in San Diego and spent most of his professional life there. In that time, the city grew by leaps and bounds, more than tripling in population.

"To go from home to work started out as a 20-minute ride and then wound up being a three-hour ride by the time I left," he said.

In 2006, he decided he'd had enough. He and his family moved north, to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

"It's not in my path at this point in time to be so urbanized," he said.

Morgan worked for nonprofits there for a while, before striking out on his own as a consultant without a regular gig. He enjoyed consulting, liked the way he could show up at an organization for a few weeks and put it back on track. Eventually, though, his wife had had enough.

"My wife said, ‘You know it's time to go get a job. You're killing me,'" Morgan said.

It wasn't a tough sell.

"I kind of missed being a part of a team," he said.

So he started looking around. He said there's something of a network of animal welfare administrators who share job postings with one another. He saw the Mat-Su job, applied and was hired.

On the drive up through Canada, Morgan said he filled his Facebook page with updates, taking pictures of the scenery and the wildlife. He enjoyed it immensely. That he did that drive in the winter rather than summer didn't seem to be a factor.

"It was like a drive through New Hampshire," Morgan said.

He's been on the job since the end of December 2011 and has so far been taking stock of the department.

"To be honest with you, I am pleasantly surprised. It is a beautiful facility, the staff is very dedicated, very positive, upbeat. They do indeed care about the welfare of the animals," he said.

As for the other sense in which he's come a long way - Morgan began his professional life selling pets and pet products. Now he's on the other side of what can sometimes be an adversarial relationship.

"I kind of look at as full circle. I started selling puppies in the mall that came out of puppy mills and now I'm fighting against that," he said. "We all evolve in our careers in a positive direction."

He said he made the jump to nonprofits first, working with humane societies and the like. Lately, he's been trying to move into the municipal animal care sector, something he achieved with this new job.

Morgan said that while he's still taking stock of the department, he has found some things he'd like to address.

"When you come in and shake the tree there's always a few elephants that fall out," he said.

First on his list of priorities is creating a set schedule for his staff, he said.

"Right now the schedule is set on a weekly basis, so it's very in flux," Morgan said.

Also, there's money. Unlike the nonprofit sector, with municipal organizations the money in play comes from taxpayers and no one wants to see it wasted.

Morgan said that means "spending money appropriately, making sure that everything is run as efficiently and effectively as possible."

He said he's also working to build relationships in the community. The department is reviewing its contracts with both the cities of Wasilla and Palmer to make sure everyone's treated fairly in the arrangement. Animal care works pretty closely with law enforcement, so there are a lot of people he needs to meet over there, he said.

"You're going to agree on some things and you're going to disagree on some things," he said. But the best way to handle that is to "get personalities out of the middle of it."

He's also meeting with rescue groups, shoring up those relationships, defining how they work. Rescue groups play a crucial role in animal control by taking animals off the borough's hands, which helps the shelter avoid crowding. Which, of course, helps avoid euthanasia and therefore meet one of the shelter's main goals.

"Our goal is to have as many animals as we can go out feet-down and not feet-up," Morgan said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.