Rongione said he was \u201cthrilled to have the opportunity to serve.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBut after three long, hard [years] \u2014 going through a global pandemic and civil unrest and a generational political transition, it was just time to say, you know what? I\u2019m going to hand the baton off and get some fresh legs here to carry it forward. And I\u2019m going to focus on my family while I have the time,\u201d Rongione said.\n<\/p>\n
Back in February 2022, Rongione found himself at the center of controversy in Upper Darby following an internal feud<\/a> regarding whether $6 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds were misallocated.\n<\/p>\n A bipartisan faction of the township council \u2014 three Democrats and three Republicans \u2014 placed most of the blame on Rongione\u2019s shoulders, while five Democrats on council categorized the probe as a faux scandal and expressed their support for Rongione. All of the infighting left roughly $35 million in ARPA funds unspent as the situation turned hostile and litigious<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n The township council voted 6-5 to remove Rongione from his position in June and even requested the police to prevent him from working in the township administration building.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rongione said he was \u201cthrilled to have the opportunity to serve.\u201d \u201cBut after three long, hard [years] \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[52430,212,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-109886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-american-rescue-plan-act","tag-delaware-county","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}