DISCONTENT HAS BEEN SIMMERING SINCE HAVARIS TOOK THE — AHEM — REINS.

Al Patterson, a tyro of volunteerism within various non-profit organizations for over 25 years. A letter was sent to the equestrian community by the Jumping Committee, to share “grave concerns regarding the state of our organization under the current leadership of its CEO and Board of Directors.”

These concerns include the optics of an $80,000 contract awarded to the EC president’s son’s company with no request for proposals (RFP) from any peer firms, and what critics call a “veil of secrecy” permeating the EC office.

The letter cites EC’s finance department’s third straight deficit and complains of its failure to produce even partial financial statements for nearly a year. (A longtime CFO quit for unpublicized reasons a year ago, and EC has gone through two more CFOs since. A new, reportedly competent CFO is hard at work.) that her executive has created a “closed circle” in terms of its method of choosing voting members insisting that it is in fact “now more open.”

However, this contradicts the record of a meeting Havaris had with Elizabeth Hay, a former CBC journalist and a 40-year veteran of horse sport participation. Hay published an open letter to the EC board on Jan. 30 with a long and detailed list of complaints, enclosing notes from a conversation she had with Havaris, in which Hay says she told the CEO that the method of choosing voting members was essentially “a closed private club where the general members don’t have a chance to have a say. (Havaris) said she saw my point and I was right.”

On Feb. 1 EC issued a statement, confirming its “total confidence” in its “President, CEO and Director of Finance.” While the letter admits “we were failing