Mike Geisen was, and still is, a practical man with more common sense than most. He has lived much of his life in a rural area, a few miles outside Belle Plaine on the edge of Carver and Sibley counties. No doubt he was bewildered back in 2006 when his new neighbor, a transplant from the suburbs, was putting up pasture fence for horses and explained what he was doing as if asking for Mike’s approval.
“What do you care what I think? It’s your land. You can do what you want,” he said.
“Yeah, but I’d rather get along with you more than not,” the transplant said.
“Besides, two of the three lines will be hot and I wanted you to know in case your kids or grandkids touch them and got shocked.”
“Well, if they’re dumb enough to do it twice, they deserve it,” he said.
Property rights – the notion a landowner can use their property strictly as they wish without concern what a neighbor might want – is a sometimes-complicated issue, depending on many factors not the least is where a person lives. It’s not as simple as the president nixing peoples’ rights to host wind or solar energy farms on their land because he seemingly favors the economic benefits of fossil fuels. What Joe Average can do with his land in a rural area, where property is measured in acres without worry of impacting a neighbor, can be far different than in an urban, or in this case, suburban or ex-urban area, where houses are in each other’s shadows and yards are measured in square feet and sometimes separated by privacy fences.
Last week, New Prague city councilors Rik Seiler and Shawn Ryan and Mayor Chuck Nickolay addressed a request from residents who want the city to establish an ordinance allowing them to maintain chicken coops and runs in their yards. With only three members of the five-person council present, the city council unanimously agreed not to pass an ordinance permitting backyard chicken coops. To be fair, this issue has been thoroughly vetted by city staff.
New Prague’s Planning Commission has taken up the matter four times in 2025. The city council has taken up the issue twice this calendar year, once to direct the planning commission to hold a public hearing.
On the surface, it seems a reasonable request. New Prague is the lone city in Scott County not to allow the backyard coops. After all, some might argue, it’s your land. But in town, folks are more connected.
The proposed ordinance would allow a homeowner to build a secure coop in the backyard, feed the hens, provide them water and eventually collect eggs. The coops would ideally provide some relief to the price of eggs in grocery and c-stores. It should be noted backyard chicken coops have been an issue long before avian bird flu – not Joe Biden – tore through the industry sending prices skyward.
The proposed ordinance was discussed by members of the planning commission – twice – and finally the city council where the proposal was nixed Monday, Aug. 4, with some discussion. There was nobody speaking for approval.
In the world of urban planning, one person’s simple request can create problems a neighbor just might find intolerable. Ideally, the person and the neighbor could discuss it and seek a mutually-acceptable solution. If that doesn’t work, there’s always the opportunity to address the concern with their elected city council representatives or city staff to gather more information and potentially seek some form of relief.
If only life were that simple. It’s not.
All too often these days, some people turn to social media first to kvetch without letting facts get in the way of a good rant. In addition to the noise the hens might make, sometimes in non-waking hours, there’s the potential of scattered feed and unwanted pests the scattered feed might attract. New Prague is nicely situated on the edge of a metro area, with plenty of nearby critters – dogs, raccoon, skunks, opossum, birds of prey, feral cats and more – which may want to feed on defenseless hens in a yard or coop. Imagine a homeowner with a coop in the adjacent back yard being visited by an uninvited guest attracted into town by the lure of fresh poultry.
While Scott County’s other cities have permitted allowing backyard chickens, New Prague wisely opted to go a different route. There’s a place for everything, even backyard chicken coops. In New Prague today, the proposed ordinance was a challenge the city council decided to avoid.