WASECA, MINN. -- This is a friendly, welcoming place, a billboard announces at the approaches to town, no matter how long you plan to stay:

"Waseca. For five minutes. For a lifetime," it says.

Or in the case of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, for 24 years and four months -- maybe.

Convicted in May on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and other charges related to the 2001 collapse of the Houston-based energy giant, Skilling was to present himself today at the federal prison in Waseca.

But he won a last-minute delay Monday when the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans issued a stay of the order requiring him to report by this afternoon.

The stay was granted only to give the court time to consider Skilling's request for bail pending an appeal of his conviction, the Bloomberg News Service reported late Monday.

"We'll welcome Mr. Skilling to Waseca just like anyone else," a smiling Mayor Roy Srp said Monday, before the stay was ordered. "Except he'll have to stay behind iron bars and razor wire.

"Nobody in Waseca has any compassion for Mr. Skilling," Srp said. "But a great many people in this community have compassion for the people who were bilked out of their pensions and life savings.

"The Enron scandal has a lot of people interested in corporate America, in what is appropriate and what is not," Srp added. "That's why this is important."

The Waseca prison is a converted college campus where he'd likely share a dorm-style "room" with other federal felons.

It would be a marked step down from the Houston mansion where Skilling -- federal inmate No. 29296-179 -- has been confined since his sentencing in October, his movements monitored by an electronic ankle device.

Once the nation's largest wholesaler of gas and electricity, Enron collapsed in 2001 shortly after Skilling's resignation as CEO, wiping out thousands of jobs, investments and pension accounts.

But Skilling's scheduled arrival hardly put the people of Waseca in a lather, the mayor and others said.

"We don't usually see anybody who's going into the prison or know what's going on out there," said Dean Worke, co-owner of the Pheasant Cafe.

"I do think people take this kind of crime more personally," he added. "People work a lifetime to retire, and all of a sudden that dream can't be fulfilled. But I haven't heard a lot of people talking about it."

Amy Stanek, working at a Waseca print shop, said that she watched a documentary on the Enron collapse and believes it would be "good to see justice being served" by Skilling's incarceration.

Like the mayor, she wondered whether such a high-profile prisoner's presence would draw attention to Waseca and "be a little plus for our economy ... though we like to be recognized for other things, like our good values and good places to eat."

Virginia Collins, who was doing some Christmas shopping, said that she has a friend who works as chaplain at the prison.