BELFAST – It all comes down to how well Belfast measures up.

That’s the conclusion Mayor Mike Hurley has made about Bank of America, as the financial services giant considers the fate of the MBNA operations in Maine it is purchasing, along with the rest of the credit card lender’s holdings.

At Bank of America’s request, Hurley and City Manager Terry St. Peter met with the bank’s Brian Grip and Jim Mahoney on Wednesday, Hurley said. That meeting followed a session at the State House at which Bank of America representatives sat down with Gov. John Baldacci and his staff on Tuesday.

The governor pitched the benefits of staying or expanding in Maine.

Hurley said at Wednesday’s meeting, Grip and Mahoney reiterated that no decisions are imminent about the 3,000 MBNA jobs in Maine. Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis said in June, when the MBNA acquisition was announced, that 6,000 jobs would be cut from both businesses as the two companies became one.

The combined company will employ 200,000 in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Both Grip and Mahoney had worked for the Boston-based Fleet Bank before Bank of America purchased it, Hurley said. That purchase took nearly two years to complete. Bank of America cut about 17,000 jobs by the time Fleet was folded into the larger company.

“As they pointed out,” Hurley said of Grip and Mahoney, “everybody should just take a deep breath” and wait for the acquisition to move forward. “Things are not going to happen at some blistering pace.”

More than 1,000 employees from Bank of America and MBNA are working on merging the two companies, Grip and Mahoney told the city officials, a task that will take “an incredible amount of planning,” Hurley said.

As two who survived Bank of America’s acquisition of Fleet, Grip and Mahoney told Hurley and St. Peter they understood the anxiety that comes with such a takeover.

“We understand that. We know what that’s about,” Hurley said Grip and Mahoney told him.

The mayor said the officials were favorably impressed with a packet of letters sent to the company from Belfast area businesses and groups touting the place MBNA has held in the area. The letter writing was organized by the Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce, which is working to keep the MBNA jobs.

“They were very impressed by MBNA’s place in the community,” he said.

But ultimately, Hurley believes, it will be numbers that drive the company’s decisions.

“Without a doubt, MBNA and Bank of America are both ‘metrics-driven’ companies,” Hurley said. “They measure everything.”

The company will likely analyze in great detail the costs of operating at current levels or expanding in Maine versus other locations, he said, and such important issues as the available labor pool and staff retention.

“How do we shape up? We will find out,” Hurley said.

Trying to remain optimistic about the transition, he said MBNA underwent a sharp staff reduction just months before the company was offered for sale, which may have left the company lean enough to avoid drastic cuts.

At the same time, Hurley said Bank of America does not want to create any expectations about what it will do in Maine before studying its new holdings.

Hurley said he and others in the area have researched Bank of America’s operations elsewhere and been cheered by what they found.

“We have checked them out from a lot of directions, and they are a very good company,” he said. Next year, Bank of America projects to donate $200 million to various charitable endeavors.

“They are a really good corporate citizen,” Hurley said.

No further meetings have been scheduled, but city officials plan to stay in touch with company representatives, he said.