Homeowners unwilling to take over HOA administration

I'm on the architectural committee and was asked by the developer to inform our community of 60+ home sites that he wants to transition HOA admin. to the homeowners. The developer has been very hands-off in running the neighborhood. There is no reserve fund and he contributes no money to the HOA. The governing docs do not specify a transition date.

50 of the 10+ ac. home sites are sold, with 25 current residents. A group of vocal residents say we shouldn't take the HOA admin. until we have "total control". The developer has 5 votes/lot to homeowners' 1/lot, so he can control voting, although he says he will go along with whatever the majority of homeowners want and we seldom vote on anything anyway. Developer has agree to an all-homeowner board and an architectural committee with a homeowner majority. Some in the vocal group have admitted they don't want a board that will start enforcing the extremely lenient CC&R, although there are currently no gross violations. They also say they don't trust the developer, yet by not taking the admin. they leave their annual assessments in his hands.

The remaining residents and lot owners have been apathetic and non-vocal. I'm concerned no one will volunteer to serve on the board even if we agree to the transition.

Any advice on convincing homeowners transition would be a good thing and that they should get involved in running the neighborhood?

Thanks!

Can't argue with that.

Turnover typically occurs when the owners have more votes than the developer's weighted votes. As far as I know, the developer still has their 5 (or however many) votes per lot, they just don't have enough votes to control.

At 50 out of 60 lots sold, the owners have the same number of total votes as the developer, once one more is sold, the owners will have more, so it seems to me the "total control" threshold has come to pass or will soon. Once a turnover/election meeting is scheduled, maybe more owners will come around to realize it's time to wean themselves from relying on the developer to manage things. How many board members do your docs call for? Normally you need a quorum (% set in your docs) to elect directors at an annual meeting, but there might be a relaxed requirement for turnover, so it's possible that a fairly small minority could elect the initial board if too many owners want to play ostrich.

Then a few more will have to be sold before you can make any amendments, but the homeowners are just about to the point of having a majority for elections and other items where majority is all you need.

For perspective, my association is 20 years old and we've never amended the CCRs, so it's not something that needs to be done on any regular basis. I wouldn't bother trying to remove developer references until you need to change the CCRs otherwise, you can just ignore those references after the developer owns no lots.