JANUARY 2005 ANNUAL MEETING AND BOARD MEETING

The big news at the 2005 annual meeting was the election of officers. Robin Ratliff is our new president. She won over Sharon Dixon by a wide margin. 3,870 to 2,230. For Vice President Sharon Londono won with 3,588 votes over Kelly Ireland who got 2,320 votes, Jim Owens withdrew three days before the election due to the serious problems he is having in his own region. There were around 500 absentee ballots. Tony Coleman ran unopposed and Lee Vulgaris ran unopposed for Secretary. At the end of the meeting Bill Katich handed Robin a note stating he was resigning as director at large. I had encouraged Robin to get Cordy Overgaard involved at a national level since his own region would not use him. She had appointed as chair of the rules committee. Now she has asked him to be a director at large. Good move.

AMATUER OWNER COMMITTEE --We now have Amateur Owner Geldings for Gold classes in Fino, Performance and Pleasure. The AMATEUR OWNER COMMITTEE which I am a member is chaired by Lauren Conde. Lauren did an excellent job of putting together the proposal and presenting it to the board. The only questions about it was fitting three more classes into the already jam packed National Show schedule.

Out of all of the discussion it was determined that the Geldings for Gold program was faltering and another committee was needed to help generate more interest in the Gelding for Gold program well as the gelding programs as a whole.

It was voted to have a Geldings Committee of which I was appointed chairman. I am looking for committee members. If anyone is interested I would love to have you. I am also looking for ideas to make our gelding programs stronger. As you probably know we have now broken out the gelding classes into age groups which adds more classes.

COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE-- I presented a motion to make the committee reports available to the entire membership through the PFHA web site. This caused all kinds of fussing by Rick Meyer, C.J., Tony Coleman and the new secretary. So to keep from killing the motion we kicked it over into the Communication committee for further study. Since the meeting it was discovered that you can already access the committee reports with your PIN number. For now until the home office figures this out we are not going to make an issue of it and you should be able to access the reports within the 30 day window before the April meeting. After you have read these reports I would like to have input from my membership on any of the issues.

Lynn Gallup was re-appointed to chair this committee she has done an excellent job and I am sure will continue to doe a good job.

COMPUTER COMMITTEE—The board voted to make a $13,000 improvement in the software. Keith Hainline was re-appointed as chairman.

CONFEPASO—It was reported that Ecuador and Mexico are becoming players in our breed. The 2005 Mundial will be held in San Juan Puerto Rico. Dr. Laracuente and C.J. Marcello are the committee chairs.

EDUCATION CJOMMITTEE—Dr. Laracuente was apointed new chairman.

ETHICS COMMITTEE—Joan Cox is the new chairman. She was on the committee last term.

EVENTS COMMITTEE—The committee still wants the new committee to work on area wide championship shows. I was very vocal against what was proposed at the last meeting and got it defeated. Not that I am against the idea, but it didn’t make sense to me to have a championship show in May, which would be the first show of the season and there was no coordination effort on the part of the home office with the regions that it represented.. It would have walked on top of our Springfield show, which is one of our cash cows that supports this region.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-- Registrations, Transfers, Genetic Testing Kits and Stallion Breeding reports were all slightly down from 2003. Show entries were up 1712 entries from last year. C. J. was critical of the organizational structure of this association. He says the Board should consider the hard decision to restructure the Association to a more member represented organization. At the same time they are critical of the fact that we have too many delegates and the board in its present form is too difficult to manage. I hear all of these complaints, but I am not hearing of a better solution. Lyle Wilson’s proposal several years ago certainly wasn’t a solution. It actually gave more political power to Florida and forced several regions to have to share a board delegate. What we must always remember is that the regions is what makes the show system work. Without the regions the show system as we know it today would die and so would the National show. If anybody has some brilliant idea on how to re-organize this association and move to a registry of 200,000 horses instead of 45,000 I’m sure we would all like to know about it.

FINANCE COMMITTEE—we should finish 2004 in the black with $22,000 to $34,000 and should position the savings goal at 39.1%.

FUTURITY COMMITTEE—The new chairman is Robin Davis

HEARING COMMITTEE—The new chairman is Sharon Londono. There were no cases to be heard.

JUDGES AND STEWARDS COMMITTEE—Rick Meyer is the new chairman. The committee had a clinic during the annual meeting. There are 15 new applicant judges.

MARKETING COMMITTEE—Sara Holt is the new chairman. She is taking Al Berry’s place as the marketing director.

MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE—Mid-Atlantic applied to become a region. Anytime a new region is proposed our region is always brought up in the discussion. I thought Rick was actually in favor of this new region., after he got through with all of his little digs about High Plains. The problem I had and the board was Ann Howell didn’t even show up to make her presentation, therefore it was voted down. She showed up on Saturday and claimed she was told the wrong day. Lon Zak is the new chairman.

NATIONAL SHOW COMMITTEE—Stephanie Livingston is the National Show Chairman for 2005. The theme will be Symmetry in Motion. She Logo will really be nice.

PERSONNEL COMMITTEE—Our own Charlene McFadden is the new chairman.

PLANNING COMMITTEE—We have not had a chairman of this committee, but the new chairman is B.J. Shuler. Robin opened up for discussion what we as board thought this committee should be working on. Some of the ideas were, marketing, restructure, membership growth. Better support of regions from nationals, embryo transfer, regional bylaws revision, national show, voting and election process, point restructuring, number of shows standardization of show schedule, location of national show.

PROFESSIONAL TRAINERS COMMITTEE—Alice Page was and is the new chairman.

REGISTRATION COMMITTEE—Past and present chair Mary Emmons

RULES COMMITTEE—James Owens was the chairman. Cordy Ovaargard was picked to chair this committee. I assume he will stay although he is Robin’s pick to replace Bill Katich.

RULES CLARIFICATION COMMITTEE—Robin chose Dr Farringer to take Fred Moretti’s place.

USA EQUESTRIAN COMMITTEE—Fred Moretti will stay as head of this.

YOUTH COMMITTEED—Marcia Davis will stay on a head of this committee. She does a terrific job and was responsible for raising $40,000 for the Youth Foundation Scholarship. She will also be responsible for the Youth Mundial to be held in the U.S. in 2006.

I have attempted to condense my report as much as possible, in doing so things can be left out. If any of you have any questions or need clarification, please don’t hesitate to call me. I hope you will visit www.phha.org with your pin number and tap into the April meeting reports and give me your thoughts on issues.

My phone numbers are 620-275-0114 office, 620 275-2324 home, cell 620-521-0003. My e-mail address is sburgess67846@sbcglocal.net.

Always remember that your region, your national association and your board delegate are here to serve you the member.