The sign in his store window reads: "Our staff parks in a lot so our clients and guests have convenient street side parking. How about your staff?"

Ken Rattenbury, owner of Fret Mill Music Co. on Salem Avenue in Roanoke, is a bit of a stickler. He hates seeing other downtown employees take street parking from potential customers. "I try not to get into confrontations," he said.

Moments later, Rattenbury watched from his window as Piyapong Ditsuvankul, a manager of Tong's Thai restaurant next door, stood on the sidewalk studying his own parking ticket intently. "I feel bad," Ditsuvankul said. "I have to pay $15."

Nearly 2¹₂ months after the city's new parking enforcement initiative took effect, Rattenbury and police say that the threat of escalating fines and "the boot" for repeat offenders has convinced some chronic parking offenders that the city means business. The result, they say, is more available parking downtown.

"A lot of the people that were abusing it are off the street," said Roanoke police Sgt. Charles Karr. "But they're slowly starting to come back."

Some downtown employees refuse to pay for parking and continue to play the game, moving from one parking space to another to avoid the parking patrol. Some even try to fool parking enforcement officers by erasing chalk marks from their tires.

A few downtown merchants said they haven't noticed a difference in the parking situation. "Everybody I know that works down here pays by the month," said Sandy Wilkinson, co-owner of Little Dipper on the city market.

Under the new parking rules that took effect Feb. 1, overtime parking offenders receive a warning ticket for their first offense, along with a map of off-street parking facilities. Their next ticket is $15. Overtime parkers who get a second and third ticket in one calendar day must pay $30 and $45, respectively.

If a vehicle has five or more unpaid tickets, police can immobilize it by locking one of the boots onto a tire. The repeat offender then has 24 hours to pay all outstanding fines -- with cash, money order or cashier's check only -- or the vehicle will be towed and impounded.

The citywide parking rules apply wherever there is timed parking.

Nine vehicles have gotten the boot since Feb. 1. One was towed. More than $3,800 in outstanding fines has been paid to free booted vehicles.

One man had 27 outstanding tickets and paid $1,287 to have the boot removed. Then he racked up 15 more tickets.

Under the new parking initiative, police had distributed 597 warning tickets as of Friday.

In February and March, a total of 3,351 parking tickets were distributed citywide, compared with 3,672 over the same two-month period last year, said Dana Long, manager of billings and collections for the city. Those numbers include all parking tickets, not just overtime violations.

"The whole goal of this is not revenue," Long said. "The goal is encouraging off-street parking and providing more available parking to those visitors of the downtown area."

Roanoke is not alone in its use of the boot. At Virginia Tech, a vehicle is eligible for the boot after it gets five parking tickets in one semester. It then costs $25 to have the boot removed. In Blacksburg, overtime parking tickets are $15, and a vehicle with three outstanding parking tickets could be towed and impounded. Blacksburg, Salem and Vinton police don't use the boot. Overtime parking tickets in Salem and Vinton cost $10.

Any Roanoke police officer can issue a parking ticket. But the city's three parking enforcement officers are the faces of the new initiative.

One is Bob Ratliff. A retired sheriff's deputy, he circles the streets of downtown armed with a 3-foot-long piece of PVC pipe tipped with yellow chalk to mark car tires. He also carries a camera and a hand-held computer that tells him which vehicles should get warning tickets, and which ones are asking for the boot.

He reckons he distributes an average of 25 tickets per day. "I give more directions than I give tickets," he said.

No one has gotten the boot twice -- not yet anyway. Police said they believe it may be coming. Roanoke has a list of 169 vehicles that could get the boot if they are caught illegally parked again before all outstanding fines are paid.

Karr, who supervises the parking enforcement officers, speculated on what it must feel like to get the boot: "I think it's embarrassing."

Perhaps so. Two boot recipients declined to be interviewed for this story.