Nov. 1 -- CARTHAGE, Mo. -- The Carthage City Council is moving on without Dan Rife, who was impeached Tuesday. Rife, meanwhile, who had been the mayor, is seeking to stop the impeachment with a writ of prohibition in Jasper County Circuit Court that awaits a judge.

The Council, in a special session Thursday, swore in Alan Snow as mayor and voted to add Council Member Tom Barlow as chairman of the Public Services Committee and as a member of the Budget Ways and Means Committee.

Former Council Member Dustin Edge, who resigned from the city council in September, had been chairman of the Public Services Committee. That committee didn't have a quorum when it tried to meet in October, which is why Snow said he made the appointment of Barlow to chair the committee.

"There is some business the Public Services Committee needs to perform in the next week or so, so I am going to go ahead and submit the appointment for today's meeting," Snow said. "I will say that these appointments are temporary because I am looking at appointing a couple of people to the council and once we get those new people appointed to the council we will have to reassign committees and do some moving of people on the committees. So this appointment today is to get the public services committee with enough people for a quorum and establish a chair for the committee."

In the meantime, Rife's attorney Christopher Thornton, filed a motion asking for a "writ of prohibition" this week to stop the council from ousting Rife from office.

Thornton argues that six votes is not enough to oust the mayor, and the council needs two-thirds of the total number of seats on the council, which is 10. That would mean the council needed seven votes to impeach. The four counts on which Rife was impeached each passed on a vote of 6-2. A fifth impeachment charged failed on a 5-3 vote.

Snow told the Globe Tuesday that he had ruled that two-thirds of the eight current members of the council, or six, was sufficient to impeach Rife and remove him from office.

Paul Martin, the attorney who prosecuted Rife and represented the council in the impeachment, filed a response to Thornton's writ of prohibition saying the council can interpret its ordinances however it pleases.

"The Carthage City Council has the exclusive and unfettered right to interpret and apply its own ordinances," Martin wrote. "In voting to remove relator Rife, the city council, acting as a board of impeachment, interpreted and applied the plain meaning of Section 2-122(d) (of the city code), as amended just one month ago, as requiring a two-thirds vote of the current council members as sufficient to remove Mayor Rife. The council's removal of relator Rife from office not only was an accurate interpretation and application of Section 2-122(d), it was a legal determination made within its discretion as a board, and prohibition does not lie in such circumstances."

As of Friday, all the circuit judges in Jasper County had recused themselves from the case and Thornton's petition had been sent to the Missouri Supreme Court for assignment to a judge from outside the county.