Downtown parking issues come bubbling to the surface, and it's not a bad problem to have, really, just a confusing one.

The Tribune leads off Sunday's edition with required coverage of Infantile Over Louisville, and then shifts into the sort of topic that many of us kept hoping would someday become a problem: Downtown parking.

Chronic parking offenders owe city of New Albany thousands, by Daniel Suddeath.

The council's current shared confusion over parking probably is forgivable in the short term, given that not all of the body's members (a) ever bother trying to understand downtown development issues, anyway, and (b) consequently regard their ignorance as a badge of honor (see "conjoined councilmen").

Even so, Dan Coffey's comments to Suddeath veer perilously close to intelligibility, leaving me a bit confused over downtown business owner and resident Brandon Thompson's logic:

Brandon Thompson lives and works out of a building he owns along Pearl Street, and stands as the top offender in terms of money owed to New Albany.

He took credit for two vehicles cited with more than $31,245 worth of penalties and fines for 313 tickets in the name of Kimberly Hassmann, and vowed to fight legal action in court if it comes to it.

“It’s my building, I live there and I have a business there. When I come home at night with my groceries, why wouldn’t I want to park in front of my own building?” Thompson asked.

At night? Were the tickets he knowingly accumulated issued at night, or during the day? Do we enforce at night? A car parked there at night would escape scrutiny, wouldn't it?

But that's only one aspect of the emerging need to control downtown parking, so what's the best way to approach this wonderful new problem?

Amnesty? On fines and penalties, or just penalties? Should people who willfully violated laws be held accountable in some way, or excused because everyone else was doing it, too?

Unlimited parking passes that would allow residents to occupy commercial parking spaces? With such permits, might residents park in front of my business at will?

What's the administration's position?

Many questions, indeed.