A year ago, Eliana Salzhauer might have been named "Best Politician." She was then an elected commissioner in Surfside during the town's most trying time — the aftermath of the Champlain Towers condo collapse. But her true calling at city hall was holding developers at bay while acting as the chief dissenter to Mayor Charles Burkett, whom she (in)famously flipped the double bird during a Zoom meeting in 2020. Then came the elections in March, and both she and her nemesis lost their seats in a near clean sweep by newcomers. After the loss, Salzhauer indicated that she wanted to take a break from city meetings, but that turned out to be impossible. "I don't have the ability to take it easy when someone is taking a shit in my living room," she said with characteristic bluntness. Salzhauer says the new slate of commissioners is more pro-development than ever, especially the new vice mayor, Jeffrey Rose, a prominent home builder in the sleepy seaside burg just north of Miami Beach. So Salzhauer is bird-dogging the new commission like never before, calling out every potential conflict of interest and attempt to skirt setback rules or height limits. "They just put this entire town in a cage with the snake and nobody wants to look," she says. Her efforts and means may not always be polite or popular, but Surfside, you want her on that wall, you need her on that wall.