It’s an interesting question. No, the city wouldn’t be involved. First, we could drop this management company at any
time if we wanted. We would need to get the money from the bank accounts that the management company has opened for the association, but we could totally take over the management of the HOA ourselves as board members. Or find a new management company.
But I think you are asking if we could just abandon the HOA completely and stop paying. The lawyers we have asked have told us no, we can’t do that without running afoul of some CA HOA law. But what would the state do? Unless somebody stole the funds sitting in the bank right now I don’t see anybody getting arrested or prosecuted. Who would they go after?
So outside of that, if we all just collectively decided to stop paying and somehow figured out a way to equitably disposition the cash that we already have, the biggest impact would be that nobody would be maintaining the things that the HOA is currently responsible to maintain. This includes a private road and a little bit of fencing. Those would just fall into disrepair.