VERONA - Verona City Administrator Larry Saeger acknowledged a certain Munchkin coroner, then intoned, "They're not only merely blue - they're really most sincerely blue."

The vivid blue streetlights recently installed on West Verona Avenue have stirred the city's passions - and its wallets.

Even City Public Works Director Ron Rieder says he was surprised when he opened the boxes. "I knew they were going to be blue," Rieder said. "It was just a brighter blue than what I'd anticipated.

"My first thought was that we need to order flower baskets immediately and banners and do what we need to do to make this product look nice."

The 18 decorative streetlights, which cost the city of Verona $135,000, are very blue because former Mayor John Volker likes blue.

"What's wrong with blue?" Volker asked. "You go to Baraboo, theirs are red. Is it the end of the world? No."

Volker said the downtown development committee let him pick the color. "I was presented a set of colors - green, black and blue - and I picked the blue. I like blue. We just have to do something that's a little different once in a while.

"They shocked me for a little bit, but I think they're going to really look nice."

The lights cost the city about four times more than the octagonal concrete streetlights in the rest of Verona, Rieder said. That's because Alliant Energy would have put in regular streetlights and leased them back to the city for $20 a month per light.

Instead, the City Council approved decorative lights. "I don't think the City Council knew those streetlights would be blue," Rieder said. "I don't think color was ever discussed."

Saeger said the color does reflect Verona's blue-and-yellow city logo.

And Rieder said the landscaping and decorations aren't finished. "We are going to plant a lot of trees in the area," he said. "And we have flower baskets ordered for all the streetlights, and banners ordered for all."

Community response is running about 50-50, said Volker, who stepped down Tuesday after eight years as mayor.

He mused that Veronians are less accepting of exotica than, say, people in Mount Horeb.

"We were looking for something that would catch your eye and not be something that would distract and run you into the ditch," Volker said.

"It does make a statement. We were going to put in the standard gray posts with cobra-head streetlights, and nobody would have raised an eyebrow. Their expectation of Verona isn't something exotic. They could do these in Mount Horeb, and I think they would fly. They would expect something like that. They have a culture that has gone to the more bric-a-brac-type things in their city.

Mount Horeb and New Glarus, he said, make statements. "They've got quaint little things to identify them," he said. "What has Verona got? We're trying to make a statement in Verona, too. We are a quaint little town - that has blue streetlights."

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