Tiverton planners must wonder why they bothered over the past two years.

Handed the biggest development proposal ever seen here, they’ve met night after long night to delve into the myriad details. They’ve analyzed traffic flow, stop lights, square footage, historic districts, signs, lighting and the town plan.

And they’ve taken a boatload of abuse from unhappy audience members every step of the way, especially when they recommended changes to the town plan that might enable developer Carpionato Group to build its Tiverton Glen project alongside Route 24.

The planning board wound up sending its work along to the town council for the next level of review with a favorable recommendation— a vote that prompted further derision.

Then, just days before this week’s council hearings, Carpionato changed everything.

A package of amendments filed late last week renders much of the planners’ labors and decisions effectively moot.

The submitted alterations are no mere details, rather they take direct aim at the big things over which this board has agonized since day one.

Carpionato now wants Tiverton to place the development entrance on Main Road, contrary to the wishes of planners, police, school leaders and audience. It asks the town to relinquish all control over building and landscape design standards. It wants more and bigger signs and lights, it wants the biggest building’s size bumped up from 100,000 to a Walmart-sized 130,000 square feet (the developer has not provided clues to potential tenants). And there is more.

The timing and scope of it all puts the town council in a terrible bind. It enters its hearings with a set of planning board recommendations that scarcely apply to the project as now proposed and it has neither the time nor the resources to start the review from scratch.

What the council really needs to do is send this fundamental set of changes straight back to the planning board — if those fed-up planners are willing to deal with it all again.

This project, as people thought it was shaping up, does have its supporters in town. Carpionato is not making things any easier for those defenders