Chestnut Crab is a lovely tasting crab, just picked some today.

Large fruit and persistent fruit tend not to be mutually common characteristics on most crabs, unfortunately. In general, those that bear larger fruit (greater than 1/2 inch diameter), like the Chestnut above, tend not to hold on to the ripe fruit and it will drop like a normal apple would. The vast majority of crabapples with persistent fruit - and there's a bunch - are grown more for ornamental purposes and will have small to tiny fruit that hangs on through winter or until consumed by wildlife. They are still edible and good for ciders or jams/jellies.......just hard to work with because of size.

btw, Chestnut, because of the size fruit it produces, is just on the cusp of being classified as an apple rather than a crabapple.

Dolgo crabapple

More from Minnesota...

hardy crabs

As you've already surmised, the 'edible' crabs, with relatively large(2" or so) fruits that are worthy of human consumption, are typically not 'persistent'. I'd probably plant a good edible selection and anticipate that it's unlikely that the city 'tree police' are gonna ever notice it.

Dolgo and its offspring, Centennial & Kerr are good. Chestnut always gets rave reviews, as does Wickson, and Whitney(if you can find the 'good' one)

Callaway and Evereste may be less problematic if you feel the need to conform to your town's silly rule... typically regarded as 'ornamental crabs', but with good fruit quality, but the apples will be 1-1.25" max. I've seen Callaway fruits hanging well into winter.