Sound Shore

Tomorrow night may be the best chance for residents to tell the City Council how they feel about moving the city yard from its Echo Bay site to an inland site.

The usual “citizens to be heard” session, for residents to talk to the council about any city matters they choose, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in City Hall, 515 North Ave.

In the afternoon, the council will take up a resolution to borrow $19.6 million to pay for the moving of the yard, and the design of the new facility where the city would store its sanitation trucks and road salt and where police cars would be repaired.

That doesn’t mean they’ll vote on the borrowing tomorrow. Generally, the council looks at resolutions during the first of two monthly meetings, at 3:45 p.m., and decides which ones to vote on the following Tuesday. (There are occasions when they vote on a resolution the first night – after “citizens to be heard” – if there is time pressure.)

The council  will also consider an agreement to begin working with Good Profit, the company that wants to create a food market and restaurant in the former Armory adjacent to the city yard site.

Both moves are related to a planned development of the city yard site, plus two other properties, into a 10-acre development of homes, shops and park space.

Both are also controversial. Neighbors of the site eyed for the city yard, on Beechwood Avenue, do not want the public works yard in their midst. A team led by veterans who had proposed an alternate use for the Armory, centered on performing arts space, were angry when the council voted unofficially in September to choose the Good Profit plan.