An open question for our neighbors
We are 108 households on a quiet stretch of Adams County. Our Declaration includes a built-in mechanism for ending the Association any time 80 percent of us decide we'd rather govern ourselves directly. After thirty-plus years, an expanding enforcement regime, and a newly announced fines schedule, the question deserves an honest answer.
The Case
No. 01
Our Common Elements consist of three small lots and the stormwater system that drains them. There is no pool, no clubhouse, no playground, no gated entry, no private road. The collective property we are paying to govern is, in practice, three patches of grass.
Source: Declaration, Article IV; PlatNo. 02
Architectural pre-approval for nearly any exterior change. Inspection rights on private property. Lien-and-foreclosure authority for unpaid assessments. And, as of recently, a fines rule of up to $25 per day with each continuing day a separate violation, imposed and appealed to the same Board that defines what counts as a violation.
Source: Declaration §§ 8.1.2, 8.2; Bylaws; new fines ruleNo. 03
Article XVII of our Declaration contains a clear procedure for terminating the planned community by written agreement of 80 percent of unit owners. This is not a loophole or a novel theory. It is the rule the original developer wrote into the document we all signed.
Source: Declaration, Article XVII; 68 Pa.C.S. § 5220What Changed
In October 2025, the Board approved a 2026 operating budget that raises annual dues from $96 per unit to $150 per unit, a 56 percent increase. In May 2026, the Board circulated an announcement notifying unit owners of a newly adopted Rules and Regulations document that includes a fines rule: after written notice and a cure period, the Executive Board may impose penalties of up to $25 per day until a violation is corrected, with each continuing day treated as a separate violation. Both moves expand the financial demands of the Association. Neither move was made urgent by anything that materially changed about the property we collectively own.
Two features of the fines rule are worth reading closely. An owner who disputes a violation or a fine appeals to the same Executive Board that issued it, the body serving as accuser and judge at once. And any unpaid fine becomes a statutory lien on the owner's unit, collectible in the same manner as any other assessment, which is the legal machinery that ends, at its furthest extent, in foreclosure. A $25-per-day penalty that compounds daily, is appealed only to the people who imposed it, and attaches to your home as a lien is a materially different instrument than a one-time citation.
Some of the Board's framing on the fines is technically accurate. The Board does have fining authority under Pennsylvania's Uniform Planned Community Act and under our own Declaration. But authority is not the same as good governance, and a body whose budget and enforcement reach are both expanding at the same time is worth a serious second look.
The question worth asking
"Do we want to live somewhere where the people writing the rules, enforcing the rules, defining what counts as a violation, and serving as the appeals panel are also raising the dues that pay for all of it?"
That is the structure we have. It is not the only structure available to us.
The 2026 budget itself, approved by the Board on October 30, 2025, is a useful document. It shows total approved expenses of $16,610 against total approved income of $16,632. Of those expenses, roughly $4,500 to $6,250 covers actual physical maintenance of the Common Elements (grounds, ponds, drainage, tree work, detention pond inspection). The rest, about $10,000 per year, covers legal fees, insurance, reserves contribution, operations, and administration of the Association as an entity. Reserves stood at $103,247 as of October 30, 2025, roughly $956 per unit.
One line item is worth singling out. The 2026 budget contributes $6,100 to reserves, about 37 percent of all expenses. Reserves already stand at $103,247, an amount that compares favorably against the modest future capital needs of three small Common Element lots and a stormwater system that was last inspected for $1,750. Continuing to add $6,100 per year on top of that accounts for roughly $56 of every owner's 2026 dues. Healthy reserves are a good thing. Over-collecting on top of already-healthy reserves, particularly to fund an Association whose other line items the community may want to question, is a different matter, and one worth raising at the next budget cycle whether or not anything else changes.
The legal fees line tells a related story. The 2025 budget allocated $750 for legal fees. Actual spending through October 30, 2025 was $1,886, already 151 percent over budget with two months of the year still remaining. The 2026 budget anticipates $2,000, nearly tripling the original 2025 figure. This is not the spending pattern of an Association maintaining a steady-state operation. It is the spending pattern of an Association expanding its scope: drafting new Rules and Regulations, drafting the new fines schedule, and preparing for the disputes those instruments invite. A narrowed Association doing only stormwater and Common Element maintenance would need a small fraction of this, perhaps $200 to $300 per year for routine review of vendor contracts. The remainder is the cost of having an enforcement Board, not the cost of maintaining our community.
This matters because it shows what reform or termination would actually change. The maintenance we actually need is a fraction of the total budget. The rest is the cost of running the apparatus, an apparatus whose stated reason for being is enforcement of restrictions on what owners can do with their own property. The budget is linked in the Documents section. Every owner should look at it.
A fines schedule is not, by itself, a scandal. Most HOAs have one. The reason this combination of moves, the dues increase and the new fines schedule together, has resonated with so many of us is that it crystallizes what our Association has actually become: a body whose primary product is enforcement, paid for by us at a rising rate, governing common property we barely have. That tradeoff was easier to accept when the Association was new and people imagined amenities still to come. Three decades on, the amenities never came, the restrictions stayed, the enforcement is expanding, and the price keeps going up.
The Declaration anticipated this. Article XVII exists precisely so that a community can decide, at some future point, that the structure is no longer the right one for it. We are at that point worth discussing.
Take it to the Board
If you'd like the Board to reconsider the fines schedule, the procedural objection is short, factual, and respectful. Send it by email, or print the PDF and mail it certified. Certified mail creates a documented record of delivery and tends to be taken more seriously than email.
Ask for the documents
Every unit owner has a right under 68 Pa.C.S. § 5316 to inspect the Association's financial records, meeting minutes, and similar documents. The records request asks for the supporting paperwork behind the legal fees, the reserves contribution, the budget adoption, and the fines schedule. The Board cannot refuse a properly made request without giving a written basis.
Board contact information is available in your most recent annual meeting notice or any prior Board communication. Mail can also be sent to the Association's registered agent on file with Adams County.
Two Paths Forward
There are two real procedures by which the community can step away from the current trajectory. Both are provided by Pennsylvania law and by our own governing documents. Neither is easy, but neither is impossible, and one of them, surprisingly, is mechanically less demanding than the other.
Section 7.1 of the Patriots Choice Declaration allows the Declaration to be amended by a sixty-seven percent (67%) vote of the Association. That is 73 of 108 unit owners.
A carefully drafted amendment could strip the Board of broad authority, eliminating architectural pre-approval, fines, and broad rule-making, while leaving the Association in place to handle the narrow functions that genuinely need a collective body: stormwater compliance and Common Element maintenance. Annual dues would drop to a small fraction of current levels, reflecting only the actual cost of those functions. The Association would still exist as a legal entity. It would just be limited to what's genuinely needed and nothing more.
A reform amendment is a single recorded instrument that modifies specific sections of the Declaration. The exact scope of what 67% can amend, versus what may require unanimous consent of all affected owners under Section 7.1's exceptions, is a question for counsel to resolve in drafting. A serious reform amendment would seek to address, at minimum:
Targeted for removal or sharp limitation:
Preserved:
The Association's 2025 actuals (through October 30) totaled $11,384 in expenses, of which roughly $4,463 was grounds maintenance (ponds, drainage, tree work) and $1,750 was a one-time detention pond inspection. The remaining roughly $5,170 went to legal fees ($1,886), insurance ($1,382), operations and admin ($943), the reserves contribution, and meetings. A reform amendment that strips broad enforcement authority while preserving the stormwater and Common Element maintenance functions would target the maintenance line items, modest insurance for those Common Elements, and a small admin overhead, eliminating the rest. A reasonable order-of-magnitude estimate puts annual per-unit assessments in the range of $60 to $80 under reform, compared to the $150 per unit set by the 2026 budget. Exact figures depend on the amendment language and on what insurance and admin the narrowed Association still requires. The point is structural: today's dues structure carries an apparatus the community no longer needs.
The Pennsylvania Uniform Planned Community Act and our own Declaration give us two procedural options. The amendment can be passed by written consent, circulating the proposed amendment and collecting signatures from 73 unit owners, or by vote at a duly noticed special meeting where 73 owners cast affirmative votes. Written consent is typically faster and more common for community-initiated amendments because it doesn't require everyone to be in the same room at the same time.
The amendment can be initiated by any unit owner or group of unit owners. Board cooperation streamlines the process, particularly in providing access to current owner contact information, though owners have statutory records-access rights under 68 Pa.C.S. § 5316 if cooperation is not forthcoming. Once 73 signatures are collected and the amendment is finalized in proper form, it is recorded with the Adams County Recorder of Deeds and becomes effective. The drafting of the amendment itself is work for a Pennsylvania attorney familiar with the UPCA; an estimated timeline from initial drafting to recording is three to six months with reasonable coalition support.
73
of 108 unit owners
67%
the amendment threshold in § 7.1
1
recorded amendment
The table below summarizes the operational difference between today's structure and what a Section 7.1 reform amendment would establish. These are concepts and principles, not legal drafting language. The specific amendment text would be developed by a Pennsylvania attorney working with an organizing committee, and some items below require careful drafting to stay clearly within the 67 percent amendment lane and out of Section 7.1's unanimous-consent exceptions.
| Topic | Today | Under a reform amendment |
|---|---|---|
| Architectural pre-approval | Board approval required for fences, paint colors, exterior modifications, landscaping changes per Section 8.1.2. | Pre-approval requirement removed. Underlying architectural standards in Article VIII remain recorded against the land and enforceable by adjacent owners through private action. |
| Fines for violations | Board may impose the newly adopted fines schedule under its authority at 68 Pa.C.S. § 5302(a)(11). | Fining authority removed. Violations of municipal ordinances handled by the Township Code Enforcement Officer; violations of recorded use restrictions handled through private neighbor action. |
| Broad rule-making | Board may adopt new Rules and Regulations creating restrictions beyond what is in the Declaration itself. | Rule-making narrowed to what is necessary for stormwater compliance and Common Element management. New Declaration-level restrictions still require the 67 percent amendment process. |
| Annual dues | $150 per unit (2026 budget). Set annually by the Board. | Capped at the actual operating cost of stormwater compliance, Common Element maintenance, narrow insurance, and minimal administration. Plausible range: $60 to $90 per unit per year. |
| Reserves contributions | $6,100 per year to reserves on top of an existing reserve balance of $103,247 as of October 30, 2025. | Contributions sized to actual capital needs based on a reserve study. Existing reserves retained. The current oversized annual contribution ends. |
| Inspections of units | Board has standing authority to inspect for compliance with rules and standards. | Inspection authority limited to observable conditions affecting Common Elements or stormwater compliance. |
| Board structure | Five-member Executive Board with broad governance authority across enforcement, rule-making, finance, and architectural matters. | Board (or smaller equivalent body) retained, with authority limited to overseeing stormwater contracts, Common Element maintenance, and the narrow administration that remains. |
| Insurance | Combined liability and Directors and Officers insurance budgeted at $1,500 per year. | Liability coverage for the Common Elements only. D&O coverage scaled to the narrow scope, or removed if not needed for the narrowed function. |
| Legal fees | $2,000 budgeted for 2026 ($1,886 actual through October 2025), supporting enforcement and rule-making activity. | Modest annual budget for vendor contract review only. No enforcement budget. Plausible range: $200 to $400 per year. |
| Use restrictions (Article VIII) | Recorded against the land. Enforced by the Board through warnings, fines, and lien authority. | Still recorded against the land (Section 8.3 confirms they survive any change to the Association). Enforced by adjacent owners through private legal action. |
| Common Element ownership | Association owns the three Common Element lots (H-1, H-2, H-3) shown on the recorded plat. | Unchanged. Association continues to hold the Common Elements; reform only narrows what the Association is empowered to do, not what it owns. |
| Stormwater compliance | Association is responsible for stormwater compliance under Cumberland Township Chapter 20 and the Pennsylvania Storm Water Management Act. | Unchanged. This is one of the genuine reasons to keep a narrow Association in place rather than terminating altogether. |
| Annual meeting | Required by the Bylaws; held annually. | Continues as a basic governance requirement. Agenda narrowed to the narrow scope. |
The pattern is consistent. The items that change are the items associated with discretionary Board authority, enforcement, and broad rule-making. The items that stay the same are the items associated with the physical community, the underlying recorded restrictions, and the genuine collective obligations (stormwater) that the Association exists to manage. Reform is not about dismantling everything; it is about returning the Association to what it actually needs to be.
Pennsylvania's Uniform Planned Community Act, at 68 Pa.C.S. § 5220, allows a planned community to be terminated by a written termination agreement signed by unit owners holding at least eighty percent (80%) of the total interests. That is 87 of 108 unit owners.
Termination ends the Association as a legal entity altogether. The termination agreement specifies what happens to the three Common Element lots and the stormwater system, distributes any remaining reserves, and is recorded with Adams County once the threshold is reached. Termination is more permanent than amendment. It is also a higher bar.
A § 5220 termination agreement is a single recorded instrument that ends the planned community. The statute and standard practice require it to address each of the following:
This is the part most owners don't realize: termination does not eliminate the use restrictions. Section 8.3 of our Declaration explicitly states that the standards in Article VIII run with the land and survive termination. After termination, the substantive rules about paint, fences, prohibited uses, and architectural standards remain recorded against every property and are enforceable by any neighbor through private legal action, the same mechanism that has worked for restrictive covenants in Pennsylvania since long before HOAs existed. The Township's authority under Chapter 20 and the Pennsylvania Storm Water Management Act also persists, as does the backstop under MPC § 705. The legal protections most owners care about do not depend on the Association's continued existence.
Termination is initiated by drafting the agreement and circulating it for signature. Like the amendment path, this can be done by written consent, collecting signatures from 87 unit owners, or by vote at a duly noticed meeting. Once the threshold is reached, the agreement is recorded with the Adams County Recorder of Deeds, the corporate dissolution is filed with the state, the Common Elements are conveyed per the agreement, and the reserves are distributed. Estimated timeline from drafting to full wind-down: six to twelve months. The agreement itself is recorded and effective as soon as the 87th signature is collected; the wind-down of contracts and corporate dissolution happens afterward.
87
of 108 unit owners
80%
the threshold in § 5220
1
recorded termination agreement
The two paths share a goal, restoring the community to a structure that fits what we actually need, but they differ in scope and permanence.
Reform is faster, lower-friction, and asks less of the community. It also leaves the Board structure in place, which means a future Board could attempt to re-expand its authority by passing another amendment at the same 67% threshold. The reform path is the better fit if the community wants to remove the immediate problem (overreach, fines, expanding enforcement) without ending the underlying legal structure.
Termination is more demanding but more final. There is no Board to re-empower because there is no Association. The termination path is the better fit if the community has concluded that the structure itself is the problem and that no future Board can be trusted with it.
An important point about property values, either way
Section 8.3 of our Declaration states that the use restrictions and architectural standards in Article VIII survive the termination of the Planned Community and run with the land. Both paths preserve the value-protective covenants. Both eliminate the Board's broad enforcement apparatus. The choice between the paths is about scope and permanence, not about whether home values get protected.
Both thresholds are high by design. Both require a real conversation among neighbors. Both are achievable. The question is which is the right fit for our community, and that question belongs to all of us, not to any single owner and not to the current Board.
A note on legal counsel
This site is an informational overview of options available to owners under Pennsylvania law and our recorded governing documents. It is not legal advice. Actually drafting an amendment or termination agreement, navigating Section 7.1's exceptions, and ensuring proper notice and recording are all work for a Pennsylvania attorney familiar with the Uniform Planned Community Act. Any serious effort along either path should retain counsel before circulating any document for signatures.
On Home Values
The most common objection to ending an HOA is "but my home value." It is an objection worth taking seriously and answering with evidence rather than reassurance. The academic literature has spent thirty years on this question. Here is what it actually says.
The widely-cited finding, that HOAs add roughly 4 to 5 percent to home values, comes mostly from studies of communities with substantial amenities: pools, clubhouses, gated entries, private roads, on-site security. Where the price premium has been measured, it lives in the amenities, not in the association itself. None of those amenities describe Patriots Choice.
A 2015 literature review prepared for the Community Associations Institute by Virginia Tech (Hopkins, 2015), funded by the HOA industry, so as friendly a source as exists, acknowledges that the HOA price premium decreases by roughly 0.4 percentage points per year. A 10-year-old deed-restricted neighborhood showed a 6 percent premium; a 20-year-old neighborhood showed 2 percent. By years 25 through 27, restrictive covenants had a negative effect on property values (Rogers, 2010, cited in Hopkins).
Where Patriots Choice sits
Our community is approximately 30 years old. By the HOA industry's own published numbers, any property-value premium our Association may once have added has eroded, and by the same research, we have crossed into the range where the restrictions begin to depress rather than support values.
The same Hopkins paper, citing Dehring and Lind (2007), notes that when private covenant regulations layer on top of public zoning to become excessive, the result can erase any positive value impact, or produce a negative one. A Board with broad architectural pre-approval authority, inspection rights, lien-and-foreclosure power for unpaid assessments, and now a per-violation fines schedule sits in exactly the zone the research warns about.
A 2019 study by Leon Robertson, a retired Yale researcher, examined 900 home sales across three counties in different states. He found that homes outside HOAs appreciated at a measurably higher rate than homes inside HOA-governed communities, and that's before netting out the assessments HOA homeowners paid over the same period. Even within the industry-friendly research summarized in the Hopkins paper, 45 percent of the studies reviewed did not find a positive HOA effect on values.
A common worry: "without rules, what stops my neighbor from painting their house pink?" The answer is more flexible than people assume. Dissolving the Association does not automatically extinguish the underlying restrictive covenants. The covenants are recorded against the land, not against the Association entity. Under Pennsylvania's termination procedure (68 Pa.C.S. § 5220), the termination agreement can handle this either way: keep the value-protective covenants in place and just end the enforcement bureaucracy, or eliminate the covenants entirely. The choice belongs to the community.
This matters because it means a serious property-value concern doesn't have to be a vote against termination. It can be a vote for a particular kind of termination, one that preserves the parts of our governing documents that genuinely protect values (the architectural standards, the lawn-care expectations, the prohibitions on commercial use) while ending the parts that don't (the dues, the assessments, the enforcement authority, the fines).
If you've been told that ending the HOA will hurt your home value, the honest answer is: it depends on which HOA, how old, with what amenities, and on the structure of the termination agreement. For an amenity-light association more than three decades old that has just announced a fines schedule, the research strongly suggests the value-protective case for continuing as-is is weak. We are happy to share the underlying studies with any owner who wants to read them. The case made on this site is meant to be checked, not believed.
Sources: verified, with direct links so you can read them yourself: Hopkins, E. A. (2015). The Impact of Community Associations on Residential Property Values: A Review of the Literature. Virginia Tech, commissioned by the Community Associations Institute. Read the full PDF. · Meltzer, R. & Cheung, R. (2014). How are homeowners associations capitalized into property values? Regional Science and Urban Economics, 46, 93–102. Read the full PDF. · Rogers, W. H. (2010). The housing price impact of covenant restrictions and other subdivision characteristics. The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 40(2), 203–220. Journal listing. · Dehring, C. A. & Lind, M. S. (2007). Residential land-use controls and land values: Zoning and covenant interactions. Land Economics, 83(4), 445–457. Journal listing. · Robertson, L. S. (2019). Correlation of homeowners associations and inferior property value appreciation. Critical Housing Analysis, 6(1), 42–50. Read the full PDF.
On the Common Areas
A frequent question is "won't the Township have to take over the common areas?" The honest answer requires distinguishing between what can happen and what typically does happen in Pennsylvania. Here is what the law actually says and the realistic options the community has.
Pennsylvania townships generally do not accept HOA common areas when associations dissolve. Across the state, the vast majority of stormwater facilities in residential subdivisions remain privately owned by homeowners associations or successor entities. The 2023 report on Common Interest Ownership Communities by the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission confirms this pattern at scale. Cumberland Township is not unusual in this regard.
This sounds like a problem, but it isn't. The land doesn't disappear, and the law doesn't allow it to be abandoned. What happens instead is that the community decides, in the termination agreement itself, who takes over.
Two layers of Pennsylvania law apply, and both stay in force regardless of whether the Association exists.
Pennsylvania's Storm Water Management Act of 1978 (Act 167) and Cumberland Township Chapter 20 (Stormwater Management) require that stormwater facilities continue to be maintained. The obligation attaches to the land and to whoever owns it, not to the HOA as a corporate entity. If the Association dissolves but the land is conveyed to a successor, the successor inherits the obligation. If the land is divided among adjacent owners, those owners inherit it. If it's held as tenants in common by all 108 of us, we collectively inherit it.
The Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code § 705 (53 P.S. § 10705) gives the Township a statutory backstop: if the responsible private entity fails to maintain stormwater facilities, the Township can perform the maintenance itself and assess the cost back to the property owner. The Township doesn't have to take ownership to make sure the system works.
The bottom line
The stormwater system keeps getting maintained. The Common Element lots keep getting mowed. The only question the termination agreement resolves is who pays the bill going forward, and how much smaller that bill becomes when it covers only what's actually needed.
When the community drafts a termination agreement under 68 Pa.C.S. § 5220, it specifies what happens to the three common element lots and the stormwater system. Four options are realistically available.
A successor stormwater entity. The most common path: form a narrow, single-purpose entity whose only job is maintaining the stormwater system and the Common Elements that contain it. Annual cost per owner is a fraction of current HOA dues, the entity covers basin inspection, vegetation management, and occasional repair. No architectural review. No fines. No assessments for things that aren't stormwater. No Board with rule-making authority.
Convey to adjacent owners. The three Common Element lots (H-1, H-2, H-3 on the recorded plat) are small. Each is adjacent to existing unit owners. They can be deeded to adjacent owners, divided and assigned, with the recipients accepting the small responsibility of maintaining their slice. This is particularly workable for the lots that are essentially grass strips with no stormwater function.
Distribute as tenants in common. Each of the 108 unit owners becomes a co-owner of the Common Elements at the same 0.9259% interest already specified in the Declaration. Legally workable; governance-wise inconvenient. Better as a fallback than as a primary plan.
Sell or donate to a third party. Unlikely for small, non-commercial grass lots. Possible for a willing conservation easement holder if the parcels have ecological value.
While Cumberland Township is unlikely to volunteer to take ownership, owners should know what the cost picture looks like if it ever did. Three structural scenarios exist under Pennsylvania municipal practice.
Scenario A: Absorbed into the general township budget. Maintenance becomes a line item paid via existing property taxes spread across all Cumberland Township parcels. The marginal cost to a Patriots Choice owner above current Township taxes would be functionally zero. This is the most owner-favorable outcome and the least likely; municipalities rarely volunteer to take on ongoing maintenance burdens without dedicated funding.
Scenario B: Per-parcel stormwater fee. A growing number of Pennsylvania municipalities have adopted dedicated stormwater fees to fund MS4 (federal Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System) compliance costs. Typical per-parcel stormwater fees in Pennsylvania municipal practice currently run $30 to $80 per year. Patriots Choice owners would pay that fee whether or not the Township directly maintained our facilities, since the fee applies to all residential parcels in the municipality.
Scenario C: Special assessment district. Some Pennsylvania townships use special service areas in which the actual cost of maintaining specific infrastructure is assessed only to the properties served. The annual cost per Patriots Choice owner would approximate the actual maintenance cost: $4,500 to $6,250 divided across 108 units, or roughly $42 to $58 per owner per year. This is essentially identical to what a private successor stormwater entity would cost; it just gets collected through the tax bill instead of HOA dues.
In all three scenarios, the per-owner cost runs meaningfully below the $150 per unit assessed in the 2026 HOA budget. The realistic answer remains that the Township probably continues the current arrangement and the maintenance stays with a private entity (a reformed Association or a successor stormwater entity). But the cost ceiling, even in the worst owner-funded case, is well below where current HOA dues sit.
Today's assessments cover much more than stormwater: architectural review apparatus, enforcement, Board liability insurance, management company fees, reserves for collective costs, dues administration, and so on. The stormwater portion of all that is a small slice. A successor entity focused only on stormwater compliance carries only that slice, the rest of the line items go away when the broader Association does. The exact savings would be specified in the termination agreement and reviewed against actual maintenance bids, but the structural math favors a meaningful reduction in ongoing costs.
None of this is hypothetical legal theory. The legal framework for a successor stormwater entity is well-trodden in Pennsylvania: a small unincorporated association or single-purpose nonprofit, with bylaws limited to stormwater compliance and inspection, with annual dues at a level that covers the actual cost of the work, and with no enforcement authority over anything else. It is exactly the kind of narrowly-scoped governance our community would have if the Patriots Choice Declaration had been written today rather than three decades ago.
Sources: verified, with direct links so you can read them yourself: Pennsylvania Uniform Planned Community Act, 68 Pa.C.S. § 5220 (Termination of planned community). Read the statute. · Pennsylvania Storm Water Management Act of 1978, 32 P.S. §§ 680.1–680.17 (Act 167). Read the statute. · Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code § 705, 53 P.S. § 10705 (Required maintenance of common open space). Read the statute. · Cumberland Township, PA, Chapter 20, Stormwater Management. Read the ordinance. · Joint State Government Commission, Pennsylvania General Assembly (2023). Common Interest Ownership Communities. Read the report.
Questions Worth Answering
The short version: the conventional wisdom that "HOAs protect property values" mostly comes from studies of communities with substantial amenities, pools, gates, private roads, which Patriots Choice does not have. For amenity-light, mature HOAs like ours, the academic research is much more mixed, and several lines of evidence suggest restrictions can actually depress values past the 25-year mark. The dedicated section on Home Values walks through the research with citations, and explains how a termination agreement can preserve the value-protective covenants while ending the rest.
The short answer: the maintenance obligation attaches to the land, not to the Association. The termination agreement specifies who takes over, typically a successor stormwater entity, adjacent owners, or all unit owners as tenants in common. The Township does not have to (and probably will not) take ownership, and Pennsylvania law has a backstop that ensures the system gets maintained regardless. The dedicated section on Common Areas walks through this in detail with statutory citations.
Yes, and it remains regulated regardless of whether the HOA exists. Pennsylvania's Storm Water Management Act (Act 167) and Cumberland Township's Chapter 20 attach the maintenance obligation to the land. A dedicated stormwater entity, narrower than the current HOA, is the most common successor structure. See Common Areas for the full breakdown.
Yes. Pennsylvania planned communities have been terminated under § 5220, particularly older communities where the original purpose of the association has been substantially fulfilled or where the cost of governance outweighs its benefit. Each case is community-specific. None of this is theoretical.
Reserve funds and operating account balances, after settlement of liabilities, are distributed among unit owners as specified in the termination agreement. By default, distribution is proportional to each unit's interest in the common elements (in our case, an equal 0.9259% per unit). The agreement can specify a simpler equal-per-unit formula instead.
The site now presents two paths precisely because the answer isn't binary. Reform via amendment requires only 73 signatures (67%), and accomplishes most of what owners actually want, removing the architectural overreach, fines, and broad enforcement authority, without ending the Association as a legal entity. If 87 isn't reachable, 73 may be. And even if neither threshold is met, a serious documented showing of unit-owner concern is one of the few things that meaningfully changes how an Executive Board behaves.
The Township already does, professionally and impartially. Cumberland Township has a Property Maintenance Code (most PA townships adopt the International Property Maintenance Code) covering grass height, junk, debris, and building condition; a junk vehicle ordinance; a noise ordinance; and a zoning ordinance covering commercial use of residential properties, all administered by a professional Code Enforcement Officer who can be contacted directly. Adams County animal control handles stray and dangerous animals. The Pennsylvania DEP handles environmental issues including illegal dumping and stormwater violations. Plus, the underlying use restrictions in Article VIII of our Declaration survive both reform and termination under Section 8.3 and remain enforceable by any adjacent owner through private action. The Board's broad authority does not fill a vacuum, it duplicates, and is often less professional than, the municipal framework that already exists and is already funded by the taxes you already pay.
For existing residential mortgages, no. The mortgage attaches to the property, not to the Association. A recorded amendment or termination becomes part of the property record but does not affect existing loans. For new mortgages or refinances after a change, lenders and title companies look at the recorded governing documents at closing. A reformed or terminated planned community is uncommon but not unfinanceable, and Pennsylvania title companies are familiar with both scenarios. If you have a specific concern about a refinance or upcoming sale, ask your title company directly; they will tell you whether they see any issue. Most do not.
No, and this is one of the most underappreciated facts about both paths. The recorded restrictions in Article VIII of the Declaration, the architectural standards, the prohibitions on commercial use, the use restrictions, are recorded against the land and survive both amendment and termination. Section 8.3 of the Declaration says so explicitly. Under reform, the Association continues to exist but stops enforcing them through fines and architectural review; under termination, the Association ceases to exist and the restrictions become enforceable by neighbors through private action, the same way deed restrictions worked for decades before HOAs existed. The substantive protections most owners care about, your neighbor cannot open a tattoo parlor or paint their house chartreuse, remain in place either way.
No. A reform amendment does not change who serves on the Board; it changes what the Board has authority to do. A termination ends the Board altogether. Neither path involves any specific person or group taking control of the Association. The amendment specifies the new (narrower) scope of Association authority and is binding on whoever serves on the Board going forward. Current Board members can continue serving in a reformed Association if they choose to. They simply will not have the broad authority they currently exercise.
No, though they can try to influence individual owners against signing. The Association's amendment and termination procedures are creatures of statute and the recorded Declaration. The Board has no veto power over a properly executed amendment or termination agreement. The Board could challenge the validity of an amendment in court after the fact (for example, arguing that the language falls under Section 7.1's unanimous-consent exceptions, which is why careful attorney drafting matters), but they cannot prevent a written-consent campaign from being circulated, signed, or recorded. The one practical thing the Board can do is contest signatures one by one, which is why a clean, well-documented signature collection process is important.
This is a legitimate concern in any small community, particularly one where the Board president is an active neighbor. Several practical responses exist. First, the records request and procedural objection letters are independent actions; an owner can send those without ever signing the amendment. Second, written-consent signatures for the amendment do not become public until the recorded amendment is filed with Adams County. Organizers typically hold signatures confidentially until the threshold is reached, so the Board does not see who has signed (or how many) during the campaign. Third, Pennsylvania's UPCA includes anti-retaliation provisions that protect unit owners from retaliation by the Association for exercising statutory rights. If actual retaliation occurs, document it, and consult counsel. The risk of social friction is real and should be acknowledged honestly. The risk of being denied a statutory right because a neighbor disapproves of the exercise of it is not a sufficient reason to abandon the right.
For reform via amendment: typically three to six months from initial drafting through recording, with reasonable coalition support and an attorney engaged early. Legal costs to draft a careful amendment instrument typically run $1,500 to $3,500. For termination via § 5220: typically six to twelve months because of the additional steps of common-element disposition, reserve distribution, contract wind-down, and corporate dissolution filings. Termination legal costs typically run $3,000 to $6,000 in total. Recording fees with Adams County are minor (generally $30 to $100). These costs are typically funded by organizing owners pooling resources at the start. Compared to the per-unit annual savings (potentially $50 to $90 per unit per year under reform), even a fully owner-funded effort pays for itself within a year or two for most owners.
The Documents
The case made on this site rests entirely on the governing documents themselves. Every owner should read them. They are linked below in full, exactly as recorded with Adams County.
Search across the OCR text of all governing documents. Results show the document, page, and surrounding context.
What You Can Do
Scroll up to the form and tell us what's happened with the Association. No name required, no email required. The pattern matters more than any single story, and patterns are built one submission at a time.
Not five. One. Pick the neighbor you know best and forward the link. Coalitions in a 108-house community grow at the speed of trusted, one-to-one shares, not mass emails. For neighbors who don't use the web much, there's a printable one-page summary you can hand them in person.
It governs your property and you've probably never read it. Every claim on this site can be checked against the source, please check. Skim Article XVII first; it's where the dissolution mechanism lives.
Annual and special meetings are where decisions become official. A quiet, persistent presence of concerned owners changes the room more than any letter.
If you've read this far and want to do more than the four above, the Get Involved form below tells us how. Information stays strictly private; no public supporter list will be created.
Get Involved
This effort moves at the speed of trusted, one-to-one conversations among neighbors. If you have read this far, agreed with the case, and want to help with what comes next, the form below tells us how. Information stays strictly private and is used only for organizing communication.
No public list of supporters will be created. Names are not shared with the Board, with other owners, or with anyone outside the small organizing group. You can request removal at any time.