LATHROP — Joseph “Chaka” Santos loves Robert as in Robert’s Rules of Order.

The Lathrop Mayor was so enthralled Monday with the concepts within the handbook of parliamentary procedure that he jumped the gun on an agenda item that was supposed to come later and moved the discussion to the top of the list.

Santos – who brought an expert on parliamentary procedure to the council meeting where Omar Ornelas was eventually appointed – wanted clarification after the public discussion portion of the meeting about what actually governed the way that meetings were conducted.

Over the course of the last month a committee has been working to revise the council handbook that lays out the proper procedures on everything from how to run meetings to the proper decorum in and around city hall.

The approval of that handbook – which came later in the night – was supposed to be the last action item on the agenda. But Santos wanted an answer from City Attorney Salvador Navarrete on whether Robert’s Rules of Order were in fact the guidelines for how meetings should be conducted.

According to Navarrete, the handbook applies to the action of the council, and if the handbook doesn’t cover something adequately then the most recent applicable section of Robert’s Rule of Order would apply.

Santos, however, said he was operating under the assumption that from the night that Ornelas was appointed to the council, the accepted guidelines of parliamentary procedure were what guides the council. He asked Navarrete to explain the situation to him several times.

And while the exchange might not have seemed all that important to those in the audience, the power that can be drawn from the guidelines, according to Councilman Sonny Dhaliwal, can severely impact the outcome and the flow of a meeting.

If, for example, somebody were to raise a point of order – hinting that proper procedure was not followed or a rule might have been broken – all debate on the floor must halt immediately and counsel must be conferred with prior to taking any future action.

“We have to be very careful when we use something like that,” Dhaliwal said. “We have to keep the flow of the meeting and keep things moving.”

Ornelas invoked a point of order during the budget debate during June’s second regularly scheduled council meeting. The matter never escalated beyond that point.