AAC Board of Directors – Meeting Highlights (unofficial)
Highlights of the AAC Board meeting held on Thursday, February 15, 2018.
- Judges Clinic exams for Starters/Advanced and Masters revised and approved.
- Rebecca Dunstan retired as an AAC Judge. The AAC would like to extend a thank you for her contribution to the AAC.
- Judging fees and AAC minimum fee requirements revised and approved. Effective: January 1, 2019.
- Discipline Committee (DC) Policy & Procedure (P&P) revisions:
- To address social media misinformation and member frustration with a lack of transparency the Discipline Committee was approved to amend the DC P&P to include the publishing of DC sanction decisions to the AAC website member’s only page, or due to website constraints, to distribute by Constant Contact (email) to members requesting DC sanction decisions until the next On Course quarterly release in April 2018.
- Approved amendment to the DC P&P to permit the DC to publish ALL DC decisions to the On Course quarterly Newsletter.
- Appointment of DC Screening Sub-Committee approved. The AAC Administrator will now be able to send an initial complaint to the Screening Sub-Committee when needing to seek guidance. A minimum of two members of the sub-committee must reject a case, with no member disagreeing and believing a case is valid for a case to be returned to the AAC Administrator as rejected. Should any member of the sub-committee believe the case is valid, the case will be returned to the normal DC processing by the AAC Administrator and proceed to the Discipline Committee. If the AAC Administrator receives no responses within 3 days of engaging the sub-committee, the case is to be processed as usual. Note: A rejection would not be explained in detail, only that during an initial screening process the complaint was considered without merit, (not enough material in evidence or no witnesses or supporting statements, etc., not under the DC’s jurisdiction, or has failed to respect procedural guidelines. The complainant may choose to refile later after making changes that could then be rescreened. To avoid any type of influence, no direction of what is wrong nor will guidance on how to address be provided.
- Rule Updates/Clarifications/Amendments:
- Judges Handbook Update v. 3.4 (Winter 2018 Edition) approved.
- Revisions to AAC Rulebook v7.0b, Sections 2.13 Scoring & Ranking, 3.5 Challenge and 3.7 Jumpers to clarify that dogs time must be equal to or less than SCT to qualify. Replacing several places in the Rulebook that state that the dogs’ time must be “less than”, “under” or “within” SCT to qualify.
- Revision to AAC Rulebook v7.0b section 2.11. Motion 180112. Effective: February 15, 2018. To clarify that when the time is set over SCT in Snooker, dogs can still qualify, providing the time recorded is LESS THAN OR EQUAL to the SCT (for example in Masters Snooker, if the SCT is set to 60 but the dog runs the course in less than (or equal o) 55 seconds, the dog can still Q if it has sufficient points. The same should be true for the 2nd horn in Gamblers.
- Addition of laser measuring devices for measuring dogs. Motion 180217. Effective: February 15, 2018.
- 2018 AGM meeting be held at 1:00pm PST, April 21, 2018 in conjunction with the Dogwood Pacesetters trial at Smith Training Equipment’s facility in Abbotsford, BC.
- To accommodate Judges if they are not a residents of Canada, and to remove the conflict with the AAC bylaws section 2.8, a revision to the Judges Training and Qualification Policy & Procedure and Judges Policy & Procedure from: “Be a Regular member in good standing” to: “Be a Regular/Associate member in good standing” was approved.
To obtain a copy of the AAC Board minutes (in English or French, once approved), email Blanche Cooper at AAC Administrator
The next Board meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 15, 2018.
