Fern property declared a public health nuisance

Amidst repeated reports of squalid living conditions, animal infestation, drug-induced hallucinations, mountains of junk and generally unruly behavior in an otherwise quiet unincorporated community of about 20 residents, the board of supervisors, Sanitarian Carie Sager and Grundy County Attorney Erika Allen have announced plans to file a lawsuit aimed at condemning the home of Gregory Risse and abating the nuisance once and for all.
           
Risse, who owns the aforementioned property in Fern between Grundy Center and Parkersburg, has become a household name among local police officers along with his live-in girlfriend Traci Bartholomew. The two were arrested in January after allegedly trashing a hotel room at the Legend Trail Inn and Suites in Parkersburg, and Bartholomew is serving a one-year prison sentence at the Mitchellville Women’s Correctional Facility stemming from that incident (other than Possession of Methamphetamine, all of the other charges were dismissed in court).
           
Back in 2014, Risse was arrested for pushing Bartholomew against a wall at the Isle Casino in Waterloo while carrying a revolver despite his status as a felon from a prescription drug conviction in 2000, and he received a five-year suspended prison sentence. Although it was reported during the meeting that Risse is currently incarcerated at the Black Hawk County Jail after a February arrest for violating probation, a jailer told The Grundy Register that he had been granted pretrial release on May 2 and is not in custody.
 
Both Risse and Bartholomew have been convicted of multiple theft and drug offenses and violating no-contact orders with each other, and Bartholomew is permanently banned from the nearby Mill gas station.
           
According to a fellow Fern resident who wished to remain unidentified, Risse and Bartholomew have wreaked havoc for as long as they’ve lived in the area, and in the resident’s view, law enforcement and government officials have waited far too long to take the matter seriously. Sager told the supervisors that the sheriff’s department had pages worth of ambulance and disturbance calls to the address, and junk vehicles, trailers, scrap metal and rusted lawnmowers pepper the front yard.  The house itself lacks plumbing, running water or electricity. 
 
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