By Manny Grossman

Mayor Michael Bloomberg championed his congestion pricing plan and defended cost overruns at the Croton filtration plant at a standing-room-only townhall- style meeting in PS 24's auditorium last week.

Hundreds of residents attended the event, organized by the Northwest Bronx Democratic Alliance and the Riverdale Community Association, with the hopes of peppering the mayor and his commissioners with questions. In the end, Mr. Bloomberg took six pre-authorized questions, before handing the microphone over to his commissioners and leaving. He did pledge to answer any other questions through email.

While some were upset that questions were hand-selected, Anthony Cassino, a board member of the Northwest Bronx Democratic Alliance, said the idea was to weed out personal gripes and keep the conversation focused on Riverdale's hot topics like congestion pricing, the filtration plant taking shape in Van Cortlandt Park, construction, parking and the lack of gifted and talented programs in Riverdale and Kingsbridge.

David Smelin, a Riverdale resident, kicked off the question-and-answer session by bluntly suggesting that the mayor reconsider his congestion pricing plan. Locally, the plan has been met with mixed reviews, with some, including Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, feeling the plan unfairly overburdens the Bronx.

Mr. Bloomberg brushed off these charges, calling the plan "necessary."

"There's lots of ways to reduce the number of cars and there's lots of ways to raise money, but you have to find something that does both," Mr. Bloomberg said.

Addressing concerns that Riverdale will become a parking lot for suburban commuters looking to avoid the $8 fee, the mayor said, "That's not how people behave. First of all there are no parking spaces."

Perhaps unaware that Riverdale is the end of the line for local mass transit on the west side of the Bronx, the mayor said that commuters wouldn't park here because "people try to get on mass transit as far out as they can so that they can get a seat."