When Valerie Peacock braves the crowded Bar Harbor Hannaford parking lot to get groceries, her 10-year-old son insists on staying home.

Because every time he goes into town, Peacock is ambushed by residents who want to talk about cruise ships. As City Council president, he is the central figure in a contentious debate that seems never-ending.

“I care about this and I’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure it out, but I think there are other things I want to talk about and other work we can do,” he said. . “And you know it’s a small town, so it’s impossible to get away.”

The debate centers on a citizen’s petition, approved by voters two years ago, limiting cruise ship visitors to 1,000 people per day. This puts the burden on port owners to count people entering the city, charging port owners a $100 fee for each person who crosses the border.

But after two years of lawsuits against the town by parties for and against the ordinance, Peacock said the town council began looking for a different path forward.

“So the question is, how much less do we want? And how do we figure that out? And then how do we make it happen,” he said.

The council reached a new proposal: a daily cruise ship visitor limit of 3,200, with additional weekly and monthly limits.

So while there may be more people in town on a given day, there will also be more days when there are no ships.

It is also shifting enforcement of caps to the licensing process and contracting directly with cruise lines.

“This gives us a really clear and direct way of managing visits in the future,” Peacock said.

But after years of debate, fundamental disagreements over the existence of cruise ships still sharply divide the town.

“I would definitely like to see a town without big cruise ships, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t cruise ships,” said Charles Sidman, sitting on a bench on the Village Green.

Sidman said smaller cruise ships that used to tie up at the town’s pier and spend the night there wouldn’t be a problem.

“They are much more beneficial to the local economy and do not disrupt all the visitors and residents who live on the land,” he said. “So the future I want to see for Bar Harbor cruise tourism is small ships, no ships, small ships.”

Sidman was one of the residents who filed the citizenship petition that became the 2022 ordinance and has been involved in several cases related to it.

“They’re turning our town, our beautiful town, into Coney Island or Times Square, and I believe we’re shutting down a lot more people than we’re opening,” he said.

He argued that large cruise ship crowds are a burden for most businesses. And the only people reaping the benefits of larger ships are the few retail stores right on the water and the business owners who deal directly with the dock.

The Walsh family, which operates the dock and auxiliary boat services, strongly opposes the 1,000-person limit.

“It wasn’t a means to fix anything, it was discouraging to come here,” said Eben Salvatore, who works for the Walsh family.

He said a ship’s capacity did not reflect how many people were in the city, not everyone on board went ashore, their arrival spanned several hours and was limited by the capacity of the auxiliary boats that brought them to shore.

“The reality and reality of the visit is that it is very controlled,” he said. “It’s a slower pace than people sometimes portray, and when it’s a lot less than that, it’s not 4,000 people short.”

And Salvatore said the uncertainty surrounding the town’s cruise ship policy is affecting business. He said Royal Caribbean has canceled all of its stops in Bar Harbor this year, hurting businesses that rely heavily on revenue from the fall season.

“A business model in a six-month operating period is very difficult,” he said. “And any business in Bar Harbor will tell you that they’ve been paying off bills that have been piling up all year until the end of August or September. That’s why our fall cruise ship visit is so important to so many businesses, because that’s when they start making ends meet .”

Some residents think the debate about the role cruise ship business should have in Bar Harbor points to larger questions about the role of tourism, accommodation for town residents and trust in local government.

According to council leader Valerie Peacock, the 2022 referendum made clear that residents want significant change and they want it quickly.

“Bar Harbor has changed a lot in the last 20 years,” he said. “Visitation is up a lot. You can feel it in the cars. You can feel it in the taste and feel of downtown, and people are disappointed by it.”

And regardless of the outcome of cruise ship regulations on the November ballot, those frustrations are likely to be felt in Bar Harbor long after election day.