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The Quincy City Council in brief session Monday night approved a bid of more than $357,000 for improvements at the wastewater treatment plant.

The low bid from Blick's Construction Co. of $357,415 was unanimously approved.

David Kent, director of utilities, said work will begin soon. The work includes selective removal of a steel floating cover of an anaerobic digester, relocation of an existing sludge heat exchanger, furnishing and installing a new sludge heat exchanger and constructing safety hand rails around two circular concrete tanks. Kent said the "major part of this job" had to do with the anaerobic digester. He said the structures' size is another reason for the high expense.

"It's a facility that is over four decades old, so we have some structural and operational problems," Kent said, noting that last year a roof collapsed and had to be fixed.

The Council also approved a low bid from Geotechnics Soil and Material Testing in Hannibal. A little more than $7,500 will be spent to replace two Water Quality Sample Wells at the Quincy Municipal Landfill #4. An additional $1,000 shall be included in the event of required changes and modifications. City Engineer Jeff Steinkamp told the Council that after a resolution was passed in December to award the project to a different company, the City was notified by its landfill consultant that the wells needed to be drilled with stainless steel drills.

In other action the Council approved renewing a scheduling software service maintenance agreement with Routematch Inc. for $5,000 for the City buses.

The Council also went into executive session to review minutes of past such sessions.