Newington Town Manager Jonathan Altshul told the Town Council on Tuesday that he is leaving the job in early September, ending a tenure of about two years.
Altshul said his last day with Newington will be Sept. 2. He has accepted a position as township manager in Pennsylvania.
The Town Council went into executive session at the meeting to discuss succession planning for the town manager’s office. The council is in the initial stages of a search to fill the role.
Altshul has led Newington since August 2024, after a series of municipal management jobs in southeastern Pennsylvania. He is now headed back to that region, running Cheltenham Township, a suburb of Philadelphia.
The move is a step up in scale. Newington has roughly 180 employees and Cheltenham has nearly 300 employees.
During his report to the Newington council, Altshul offered some reflections on his time in town.
“Of all the towns I’ve worked in, this is the most somehow quintessentially American,” he said of the community.
Before coming to Newington, Altshul was manager of Westtown Township, Pennsylvania, from 2020 to 2024.
From 2012 to 2020, he was finance director and assistant manager at East Goshen Township, Pennsylvania.
Earlier in his career, he worked in the U.S. Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C., and for Arlington County, Virginia. He has also taught as an adjunct professor in the master of public administration program at West Chester University.
In a statement released by Cheltenham, Altshul said he was looking forward to returning to the Delaware Valley, where he has lived for most of the past 17 years.
