# Pulaski County Zoning and Land-Use Authority Pulaski County has **no county-wide zoning ordinance for its unincorporated areas.** Arkansas counties may adopt planning and zoning under A.C.A. Title 14, Chapter 17 — a county planning board may prepare a zoning ordinance regulating land use, density, setbacks, and "other matters necessary to the health, safety, and general welfare of the county" (A.C.A. § 14-17-209), enforced through permit denial — but adoption is permissive, and Pulaski County has not enacted one for the unincorporated area. The result is a regulatory vacuum in which the only county land-use review on un-zoned land is administrative [[Site plan review]]. ## How it appears in the corpus - The absence of unincorporated-area zoning is the procedural reason [[AVAIO Digital Partners|AVAIO Project Leo]] proceeded through administrative [[Site plan review]] alone — no Quorum Court vote, no Planning Board hearing, no public hearing. - A county-wide land-use / zoning code was proposed in November 2025 (reportedly four districts, including an "Industrial Mining" classification) but **stalled** — the Planning Board lacked a quorum to advance it and it drew significant public opposition (Tier-3; web-archive pending). - On 2026-05-26 the Quorum Court voted 11-3 to **task the County Planning Board with drafting comprehensive data-center zoning amendments** for the unincorporated area, with public hearings and a 90-day reporting window (see [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Refers Five Data-Center Measures to Planning Board]]). This is the county's first formal step toward filling the vacuum specifically for data centers. ## Notes Beyond zoning, counties retain certain police-power regulatory authority — e.g., general sound/operations limits under A.C.A. § 14-1-605 (as restored by 2024 Act 173 in the digital-asset-mining context; see [[Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023 (Act 851) and 2024 Amendments]]). The distinction between *regulating* land use (permitted, via zoning or general police power) and *banning* a use outright (contested; see [[AG Opinion 2023-060 and County Authority Over Data Centers]]) is the crux of the county-authority question raised at the 2026-05-26 meeting. Statute text (Title 14, Ch. 17; § 14-1-605) is Tier-2 and not yet archived; an arkleg web-archive is warranted.