The Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association’s Seventh District council forum inside the Long Beach Petroleum Club pitted incumbent Roberto Uranga against challenger Jared Milrad Wednesday night as the two made their case for why they should serve the district over the next four years.

In what is likely the last face-to-face meeting between the two candidates before the June 5 election, Uranga and Milrad took turns answering about a dozen questions from a moderator and jabbing at each other’s credibility.

Throughout much of the forum, which ran about an hour, Milrad continued his hammering of Uranga’s voting record which he has made a centerpiece of his campaign in recent weeks. Candidates were asked questions ranging from airport noise and rent control to police staffing levels and redistricting, to which Milrad seemed to integrate those claims into nearly every answer.

“If you want to talk about an experienced council member, your experience is not showing up for work 260 times,” Milrad said.

The tactic drew groans throughout the night with Milrad and the moderator having to ask the crowd to let him finish his thoughts on more than one occasion. But both men drew rounds of applause throughout the night, too.

Last week the city clerk authenticated a document being disseminated by Milrad’s campaign as he attempts to undercut Uranga’s track record. The same document showed that Uranga’s number of absences—eight entire meetings over four years—actually rank below five of his council colleagues over the same time span with those five members missing nine meetings or more over that same time span.

The city attorney’s office also confirmed that Milrad’s campaign was referred for investigation by the state’s fair political practices commission in late March for potentially misleading voters and not fully disclosing campaign finances, claims he vehemently denies.

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Uranga obliged Milrad in those exchanges, often countering with quips about Milrad “creating his own facts.”

One of the issues where Uranga believes that his opponent is manufacturing facts is on the fate of the 710 Freeway. In March The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority voted to approve a modernization plan for the freeway that will retrofit many of the freeway offramps and onramps, neighboring streets and leaves open the possibility of expanding the freeway to add a trucks-only lane for zero or near-zero emission trucks.

Uranga backed the plan, which also included some $200 million in funding toward the purchase of lower-emission trucks. Milrad said he supports creating a trucks-lane as well, but blasted Uranga for supporting an expansion of the freeway. How Milrad envisions creating a trucks-only lane without expanding the 710 is unclear as every alternative considered by Metro and CalTrans to date that included a truck-only lane included expanding the freeway’s footprint.

Both men said they support the charter reform ballot initiative set for a vote in June which would allow the city to continue a practice of charging fees to its utilities for use of public right of ways and then transferring those additional funds to the city’s general fund. If the charter reform is defeated and the city loses or settles a lawsuit currently being litigated against these fees being charged to its gas company, it could mean a hit of nearly $20 million to the general fund annually.

Uranga said approving the charter reform would allow the city to continue to benefit from the extra revenue as it has for the past six decades. Milrad said he would support it but would fight to make sure that those funds end up benefiting the Seventh District.

“We saw the same thing with Measure A and we don’t see any of those improvements in our district in any significant way like they are throughout the other districts,” Milrad said. “There are folks who don’t have curbs, who don’t have paved streets that they’ve been asking for for decades, there are older folks who can’t make it down the street safely because of the state of the sidewalks.”

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On rent control, another initiative that the city’s voters could see on a ballot later this year, Milrad said as a “proud millennial” he wants to make sure that the city is affordable for everyone to live here but he doesn’t see that mechanism being rent control, instead he wants to stimulate the production of affordable housing through set asides and inclusionary zoning.

Uranga said he is not a supporter of the rent control initiative but it’s not really his decision anymore.

“We tried on city council and we worked hard to get to a yes and we couldn’t do it,” Uranga said. “So what happens? It goes to the people and that’s where it is right now they’re gathering signatures and if it makes it to the ballot, let the people decide. You decide what you want or not when it comes to rent control.”

Of all the issues facing the Seventh District, Milrad said the clearest one is whether the voters of the district want to vote for a change of candidate or for the status quo.

“Voters can choose the establishment or they can choose new leadership,” Milrad said in his closing statement. “Politics as usual or a leader that will put public service back into politics.”

Uranga, defended that status quo as a sense of genuineness, something he implied throughout the night that his challenger lacks.

“What you see is what you get,” he said. “I’m not scripted, I’m not rehearsed, I’m not an actor. I speak from the heart as a neighbor and as a friend.”

[Editors note: Councilman Roberto Uranga currently ranks fourth among the city council in terms of attendance over the past four years. An earlier version of this story has been updated to make that more clear.]