The AERC committees, appointed by the board of directors, accomplish many functions that are important to AERC. Motions are generated, recommendations for actions are made, protests are decided, educational material is provided to members and new riders, and rules are formulated from committees. Having an efficient set of committees is important to AERC in accomplishing our goals.

Our committee structure has been in place since the late 1980s and was developed over a period of time by past presidents Lindsay Taliaferro, Matthew Mackay-Smith and Crockett Dumas. We currently have 36 committees -- a large number for an organization of 6,500 members. In the interest of making our committee structure more efficient, we have revised the structure to fewer committees and changed how they are chaired.

Our bylaws state that we must have the following committees: Elections, Executive, Hall of Fame, and Veterinary, but the rest are determined by the President and BoD. With a few exceptions, committees are usually chaired by members of the BoD. We also have a few ad-hoc committees that come into existence for a specific purpose and time.

BoD members, present committee chairs, and our AERC office staff have provided their input concerning the committees they feel AERC needs to run efficiently. A small group headed by Vice President Connie Caudill has developed our new committee structure using this input. It's smaller -- about 22 in number, which is still substantial. We still support our major initiatives of education and trails. The most significant changes are the creation of a new Office Operations Committee and how the BoD approves grants.

The Office Committee previously provided office oversight. A new committee that will combine many of the functions that were previously accomplished in the awards, budget, investment, convention, insurance, and technical committees has replaced it. This will be the Office Operations Committee, chaired by our executive director, Kathleen Henkel. The AERC office has handled many of these functions in the past and moving them back into a single committee will be more efficient.

The other major change is to have consideration of grants take place in a committee separate from where the requests originate. This means that requests for grants would originate in the trails, education, veterinary, and research committees but would be brought to the BoD by a committee independent of the request.

I'm now representing you in a different role (President) than I have been for three of the past four years as Vice President. In my future columns I'll be talking more about issues that I think are important to AERC. If you have topics that you would like to see addressed please let me know.