BAR HARBOR – The state is developing a destination management plan to help the town and downtown waterfront property owners figure out how to best manage the flow of thousands of cruise ship passengers that flood into the scenic seaside village every summer.

When the study will be completed and released, however, has been the subject of local speculation. The project manager, Brian Nutter of Maine Port Authority, recently left his post to take a new job in Indiana, and the state at one point said it did not want to release the plan until around May, when many local business owners will be back in town for the coming tourist season.

But the town doesn’t want to wait. It is trying to finish updating its comprehensive plan, and with the 2007 tourist season approaching and more than 80 such ships scheduled to visit Bar Harbor this summer, municipal officials and local business owners have been wondering when the state will release its report.

“I would assume in the next week or so we will have a date,” Susan Moreau of the state Office of Passenger Transportation said Friday.

Moreau became the project manager of the effort when Nutter left a few weeks ago. She said the consultant drafting the plan, Bermello Ajamil & Partners of Miami, is reformatting the document to make it more user friendly and is expected to deliver the finished plan to the state within two weeks.

Moreau said the state has decided not to wait until spring to present the plan to local officials. She expects state officials and the Miami consultant to present the plan to the Town Council at a public meeting and then to go over it at a workshop that will be scheduled later.

“The [town] needs to make its own plan in the meantime,” Moreau said. “As soon as we get it here, we’re going to get it up to them.”

Charlie Phippen, Bar Harbor’s harbor master, manages the cruise ship schedule and makes sure there aren’t too many that try to weigh anchor in Frenchman Bay or tie up to the municipal pier at any one time. He said Friday that currently 84 cruise ships are scheduled to visit Bar Harbor this summer but that the schedule is always subject to change.

The Maasdam, owned by Holland America Line, is expected to make 17 visits to Bar Harbor while the well-known Cunard Cruise Line vessels Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2 each are scheduled to visit once, according to a list posted on the town’s Web site. In all, the ships expected to visit Bar Harbor this summer could bring more than 125,000 passengers ashore.

In conjunction with the destination management plan, the local Chamber of Commerce surveyed its members to find out how many of them are directly affected by cruise ship visits.

Nearly half the 128 members who responded to the survey indicated that they get business from ship passengers and staff, the Chamber wrote in a release, while 43 percent of the respondents said they did not. Only 11 percent of lodging businesses that responded said they get business from cruise ships but 93 percent of retailers said they did.

Three-quarters of the respondents said they believe that cruise ship passengers return to Bar Harbor as tourists at a later date, the survey results indicated. Chamber members said the main benefit of cruise ship visits to Bar Harbor is the tourism dollars and the visibility they bring to the town, but the biggest drawback is the congestion they create, clogging sidewalks with pedestrians and blocking the waterfront with buses that take ship passengers on tours.

Approximately one-third of the Chamber’s 450 or so members responded to the online poll.

“I am extremely pleased with the response of the survey,” Chris Fogg, the Chamber’s executive director, said in a statement. “I believe the fact that nearly one-third of our members participated indicates the importance of this industry to our community.”