The San Juan County Council has selected Seattle Attorney Phil A. Olbrechts as the new Hearing Examiner, replacing William Nielsen, who has served since 2006.

Olbrechts is currently the Hearing Examiner for seven municipalities in Washington and estimated that he has conducted well over 1000 hearings in the past twelve years. He is a member of the Ogden Murphy Wallace law firm in Seattle and says that he has the resources of “more than 40 attorneys and dozens of staff” available to assist on complex decisions.

The process that led to Olbrechts’ selection began in September when the County Council’s General Government Committee recommended that, after extending Nielsen’s contracts three times, it should open the contract position for proposals (including from Nielsen). Ten proposals were received and three finalists were selected by a screening committee that included three council members, the prosecutor’s Chief Civil Deputy, the Planning Coordinator and the County Administrator.

Olbrechts was recommended as the best candidate after the finalists were interviewed. The council’s vote to offer him the contract position was unanimous.

The Hearing Examiner presides over permitting and land use appeals. In the last year, Nielson issued 70 decisions, averaging about six per month. The most common appeal concerned condition use permits, followed by “Substantial Development” permits and Shoreline Conditional Use Permits.

Olbrechts said he expects his experience as hearing examiner, particularly in Mason County, will serve him well here. Mason County is second only to San Juan County in amount of shoreline it contains. He told the council that in recent years he has dealt with many appeals involving property owners who built cabins or small vacation homes on the shoreline years ago and have now run into problems with required buffers and conditional use permits as they plan to enlarge their cabins to make them full time homes.

“I think this [job offers] an exciting opportunity,” he told the council. “A lot of my friends dream of retiring in or someday living in San Juan County. Hopefully I’ll get to boast to them that I get to work out here.”