LITTLE ROCK — Pulaski County justices of the peace voted 13-1 Tuesday night to send a sweeping ordinance regulating large-scale data centers to the full Quorum Court, brushing aside the county attorney’s warning that the move was procedurally out of order and rejecting a last-ditch effort to route the measure back to the county’s planning department.
Ordinance 26-I-56, drafted by former judge Wendell Griffen and sponsored by District 4 Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood, would classify “high-intensity digital infrastructure uses” as heavy industrial and require a conditional use permit before such projects could be built in unincorporated Pulaski County. The full Quorum Court is set to take up the measure at its Aug. 25 business meeting.
District 7 Justice of the Peace Dianne Curry cast the lone vote against advancing the ordinance with a do-pass recommendation.
The vote came after months of failed attempts to impose a moratorium on data center development in the county, where AVAIO Digital Partners is pursuing a multibillion-dollar campus near Wrightsville. A packed chamber of residents — many of whom have attended meeting after meeting since the spring — applauded the outcome during a lengthy public comment period in which no speaker opposed the ordinance.
What the ordinance does
The 30-plus-page measure applies to data center projects meeting specific thresholds discussed at the meeting, including electrical demand of at least 10 megawatts, facilities of at least 100,000 square feet or water consumption of at least 100,000 gallons per day. Smaller projects would be exempt.
Covered projects would face a $25,000 application fee and be required to submit detailed water and wastewater plans, disclosure of all owners, operators, affiliates and controlling entities, and analyses demonstrating that utility demand can reasonably be served. The ordinance establishes performance standards, cost recovery, inspection and monitoring provisions, enforcement mechanisms and decommissioning requirements.
Applications would go before the county planning board in a quasi-judicial public hearing, with an administrative appeal to the Quorum Court — a structure Griffen said is required by a March 2026 Arkansas Supreme Court decision holding that county land use permitting decisions are quasi-judicial acts subject to review. Road-related challenges would go directly to circuit court under a separate statutory scheme, he said.
Under questioning from District 12 Justice of the Peace Luke McCoy, Griffen walked through the ordinance section by section for roughly 40 minutes, addressing material modification triggers — changes exceeding 10% of approved capacity or 5 megawatts, whichever is less, including for facilities generating their own power — as well as trade secret protections and retroactivity.
On the question of which projects might be grandfathered in, Griffen told District 15 Justice of the Peace Staci Medlock that vested rights under Arkansas law require substantial completion of a project in good faith, not merely money spent.
“You can spend a million dollars and still be nowhere close to substantial completed,” Griffen said. “As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court has said so.”
He suggested no current project in the county would qualify.
“This ordinance does not say no to development,” Blackwood told her colleagues. “It says that development must be responsible.” The measure, she said, is about “making sure that today’s approval doesn’t become tomorrow’s unchecked expansion.”
A procedural fight — and a rebuke of the county attorney
Before the vote, County Attorney Dominique Lane told the court that advancing the ordinance without a planning board recommendation violated the process the county established when it created the planning board in 1981, citing state statutes giving the board “exclusive zoning and planning jurisdiction” over unincorporated areas.
“Based just on a regular reading of the law,” Lane said, voting on the ordinance was “out of order.” Pressed by committee members on the consequences, she acknowledged she did not know whether there would be repercussions. “It is simply my duty to tell you what is legal and what is not,” she said.
Griffen, a retired judge and the Democratic nominee for Pulaski County judge, countered that the statute prohibits enactment without planning board review — not initiation.
“Tonight the Quorum Court is merely initiating its usual process,” he said, noting that the body never enacts measures at agenda meetings and that the planning board meets Thursday, well before the Aug. 25 vote. He characterized the objection as “the latest, most recent effort to basically slow the process. Enough already.”
Lynn Foster, a retired University of Arkansas at Little Rock law professor who taught land use law, backed Griffen’s reading during public comment, citing Arkansas Code Annotated 14-17-207(c), which she said contemplates planning and zoning recommendations initiated by the court, so long as they are referred to the planning board for a public meeting.
Griffen returned to the microphone at the end of the night with an unusually blunt message, reminding the court that the county attorney’s office had reversed itself on whether a moratorium was legal and on whether AVAIO holds vested rights.
“You have been getting bad legal advice,” he said. “I’m not suggesting you fire the lawyers. You didn’t hire them. I am suggesting you stop listening to them.”
District 14 Justice of the Peace Paul Elliott moved to refer the ordinance to the planning department for study, calling it “very technical in nature” and “the only writing of one citizen.” The motion failed with only Elliott’s vote in support, 12 opposed and one member recorded as present.
District 9 Justice of the Peace Tina Ward pushed back on the referral, saying the court had “sat here week after week and played table tennis” with the citizens of Wrightsville while the planning department itself was in turmoil. “Every time you look around, somebody in that planning board is resigning or getting fired,” she said.
Planning department in flux
That turmoil was on display at the top of the meeting, when Public Works Director Tab Townsell announced that interim planning director Jim Cranor has resigned effective Aug. 21 and is on family medical leave following a medical crisis in his family. Townsell said he will temporarily take over the department’s planning board duties and that the county is looking at bringing in outside help. Cranor is the second planning chief to depart this year.
Planning board chairman Mark Wilson told the court the board has held two special meetings on Blackwood’s earlier proposal, 26-I-31A, and meets again Thursday at 6 p.m. — but said the existence of 26-I-56, which Griffen described as a revision of 31A with new decommissioning and judicial review provisions, “was news to me this evening.” Wilson pressed the court on whether it still wanted the board’s recommendation; Blackwood and committee chairman Curtis Keith assured him it does, and that amendments remain possible before the Aug. 25 vote.
Public comment: ‘The world is watching’
More than a dozen residents spoke after the vote, thanking the court for advancing the ordinance while demanding it actually pass in two weeks.
Gregory Summers, a retired fire chief with more than 40 years in the fire service, including with the Little Rock Fire Department, warned that data centers house battery inventories rivaling utility-scale energy storage systems, posing thermal runaway hazards from lithium-ion batteries that the county’s volunteer fire departments — reliant on water shuttles in areas without hydrant capacity — are not equipped to handle. He called for fire protection engineering studies, water supply reliability analyses and hazard assessments before any approvals.
Valerie Hart of the Wrightsville area said she was tired of “playing rope-a-dope” and demanded the court finish the job Aug. 25. Several speakers referenced news that day of a proposal to annex the area into Wrightsville, accusing officials of more closed-door dealing.
“There’s a little more justice in the world tonight,” Foster told the court.
Other business
The committee also advanced, 13-1, a resolution acknowledging a citizen-led ballot initiative that would let Jacksonville voters decide whether to replace the city’s at-large city council system with ward-based representation. District 11 Justice of the Peace Aaron Robinson, a former Jacksonville alderman, cast the dissenting vote, saying ward-based voting would divide the city. District 10 Justice of the Peace Patricia Young-Baker, a member of the Jacksonville NAACP chapter that led the petition drive, said ward representatives would have a direct stake in their constituents’ interests. The clerk’s office has certified that organizers gathered the required signatures.
The committee unanimously advanced an ordinance appropriating a $2,000 Crafton Tull foundation grant for the 11th Division Circuit Court’s drug court program, and voted 13-1 — Blackwood opposed — to advance a resolution authorizing the county judge to apply for an Arkansas Community Assistance Grant benefiting Providence Park, with matching funds covered by the nonprofit.
District 13 Justice of the Peace Phil Stowers was absent.
The full Quorum Court meets Aug. 25. The Pulaski County Planning Board meets Thursday, Aug. 13, at 6 p.m. in the Quorum Court chambers.
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